I grew up to the thrill of opening curtain. There is something mystical about the experience. Everyone backstage quiet, set, ready. The music starts as the curtains split and open. A flow of energy flows from the audience onto the stage and it's SHOW TIME! Now days, even many professional stages have gone black box style. No curtain. The show just starts when somebody signals it's time to start. I had an active performing group for years and was never able to get them on a stage with curtain that opens and closes.

I was very excited about the stage for Neptune's Ballet Classics 2011, no curtain, oddly shaped, but enough room to actually dance a little bit, AND stage lights! After carefully selecting my costume materials to take advantage of the stage lights, I found out that most of the lights had no color gels. The most memorable performance of my life was on a good stage, with just a follow spot. For the last decade, my inquiries about follow spots, has had the same answer, "Yes, we have one somewhere, I think it might be broken."

The stage once a vast expanse of space, where a dancer could fly, has dwindled to something that threatens to be dangerously small should everyone on stage inhale at the same time. Oh yes, yes, big stages still exist, at a price too high for the average studio. The smaller stages have reshaped choreography and the face of ballet. Good bye giant leaps, side to side, front to back. Hello tiny quick steps on the diagonal. Good bye fancy scenery and lots of performers on stage at once.

The signature of ballet is the tutu. I fear many ballet students have gone through their entire careers without owning a real tutu. At a price of $350 - $2,000+ who is to wonder why? . (The three layer on stretch fabric is a play dress not a tutu.) Stay at home moms used to sew tutus for dance studio recitals. Some got really good. But few moms stay at home these days. Fewer own a sewing machine. Even when there is a sewing mom, it is hard to find good stiff net. The tutu has changed shape since its conception.

The short tutu has grown shorter, flatter, dropped from waist to hip, but at its roots its still a tutu. The new let's throw a skirt over a leotard and call it a costume has its advocates (including me.) Nothing flies like a silk circle skirt. The lines of the dancer and the dancer are delightful. But to be a ballet dancer and never have a tutu?

The Audience The audience has also changed. In the old days, it was a two way energy exchange - stage to audience and audience to stage. For the last couple decades, entertainment has become a one way street. The audience watches a movie or TV, knowing that nothing they do will alter the performance. The audience attends the live show in the same passive observer mode. Now the audience has left their bodies behind - slumped over a computer or cell phone, while their spirits fly to all corners of the world. They seem to know how to interact with a device better than with the people in the same room. Internet and cell phones are amazing and exciting. Yet, imagining flight is not the same as being air born.

In the past there were recitals and ballets. Ballets - a group of dances that together tell a story -seem to be getting replaced by excerpts from. Swan Lake is a good example. The full length version is 2 hours. That's a lot of ballet to pull together and leaves very little time to present anything else. Why not just present excerpts from Act II? 1) Act II is a communication taken out of context - the story does not get told. 2) How can a ballet student be a ballet student without ever seeing all 4 acts of Swan Lake? Tournaments have become popular. Why put on a show? Why not just go to a convention, dance, and bring home a trophy? Is that what ballet is all about? Competition and winning a prize?

It used to be there were only a handful top quality companies in the world. Now there are many regional companies. I've heard it said, the regional companies are a good thing giving more dancers opportunities to perform, and to perform closer to home. I've heard it said that when there were only a few companies, only the very best of the best were selected to dance on the stage. Thus the corps and the featured dancers were magnificent. Now one best of the best is in one company and another best of the best is in a different company, thus no one company is able to stage the brilliance of the past. All I know is that the corps of today's companies look like they need more rehearsals. In the old days there might be 30 dancers and not a one had a leg higher than the next, not a one was too far left or right. Perhaps the solution is, as many companies have done, never let them do the same thing at the same time. I like watching the everyone going different directions choreography. But there is a powerful sense of oneness when everyone is doing the same thing. I love it on the stage. I love it in class - moving across the floor in unison feels like something I cannot describe other than great.

I saw one web page that speculated that earlier dancers did not get over their pointes as well as today's dancers. I don't think that conclusion can be drawn. The old cameras required dancers to hold a position for a very long time. It is possible that the arch began to give out by the time the photographer snapped. The poses were selected because they could be held long enough for the photographer to do his work. We may never know for sure.

I do believe that in the past the dancers were sturdy. Now (thanks to Balanchine Style) they are race horses - fast, long and lean. In the past speed was not as important as being able to jump into the air and not come down. I wish someone would objectively compare the "sturdy" dancer of past to the "race horse" dancer of today in terms of career length, injury, general overall health resulting from the 2 styles. I like watching them both, but what am I watching? Bliss? Torture?

In Dance Magazines from the roaring '20's contain articles about the health benefits of dancing such as "Dancing Cured My Injured Spine." Was that truth or hype? When an insurance company claims they have a gecko as an employee, who questions it? As for me, I have back pain when I am not dancing. It goes away when I dance regularly and that's the truth.

Now the media blares of research. The research indicates that exercise is good for you in many ways. The public hears that exercise is good for you and runs off to a gym to imbibe in "Circuit Training," never realizing that ballet is a form of circuit training that has been time tested. The public would rather believe that the amazing body of a ballet dancer is the result of genetics or starvation than to consider the possibility that ballet creates healthy good looking bodies. The public seems to be aware that dancers sustain injuries and everyone seems to know that pointe shoes are "torture chambers." No one seems to blink an eye if improper technique in a gym causes an injury or poorly fit running shoes causes blisters on a marathon runner. No one seems to notice that many of the world class dancers lived to be over 80. Well ballet has depended on attraction rather than promotion. But how will we attract people into ballet, if they never see ballet?

Originally the studio was in a central location. Moms could shop while daughters danced. The upper floor of old buildings, often lodge halls were used. Stores and offices wanted the ground floor. Rent on upper floors was affordable. The old studios were huge. Cross floor exercises were side to side. One could fly for 32 counts before reaching the far side. The ceilings were high. Going up felt like freedom. The wood floors supported by old seasoned timbers made landing feel like coming down on a trampoline (well not really that much give, but I used to get a kick out of watching the floor during a group small jumbo combo - you could actually see the floor depress and spring back.)

As people moved into suburbia, it became time consuming to commute to central locations. Working moms have little time for such commutes. Stores moved from downtown areas to shopping centers closer to where people lived. The studios that stayed centrally located lost school aged students and studios that moved to the suburbs gained students. But the suburbs often lacked large spaces with old seasoned floors. Now days the studio is often located in a shopping center and students dance on concrete. Rental cost per square foot has played its part too. Smaller spaces can be rented for higher cost per square foot. The big old spaces were either sub-divided into smaller spaces or torn down. Good bye wonderful floors. New wood dances about as well as concrete. Flooring covers have been invented that can turn concrete into a danceable floor but none turn as well or jump as well as the good old stuff. The change in studio size and floor has resulted in ballet classes moving on the diagonal rather than side to side. The quicker style of movement prevents really big jumps or multiple revolutions in a turn so who's gonna miss the old floor? And then there is the ceiling. Lower ceilings save heat money, but the feeling of freedom in a jump is hard to attain when wondering if your head will bang the ceiling.

The teacher has changed. Does anyone use a cane to tap the beat and whack a foot that's out of place anymore? Christina Hintz visited Italy and told me she saw Cecchetti's cane in a museum. She said the end of it beaten to a pulp (though those were not her exact words.)

The desired beat for the music was often sung without words - perhaps a tradition that came from people working together who spoke different languages. It was great. There was no "5, 6, 7, 8" There was feeling, emphasis, energy conveyed in the "Dee-uPPAH-Dah-Dum" that was quite different from the "DEE-Uppah-Dah-DUM!" In this was combinations were communicated from fire to a gentle breeze. Now, in lieu of a cane there is only the beat "5, 6, 7, 8,"

What a change! Is that a surprise in light of everything I have written to this point?

Many of the changes noted above, have been the result of one thing - money. The cost of creating Picasso scenery, storing it, transporting it, setting it up and tearing it down has become unwieldy. The cost of operating a huge stage with a curtain that opens and closes, or renting such a stage, has become unreasonable. The cost of costuming 30 dancers in professional tutus, storing and transporting and maintaining the tutus has become staggering. The cost of renting a large space for studio demands that a teacher have a rich spouse or public support.

Costs comparisons are difficult due to inflation. What is clear is that in the early 1900's a ballet company could afford to tour the world, packing with it elaborate sets, costumes, and a large number of dancers. (There may have been lean times when not everyone got paid, but they could do it.) Now such an undertaking is rare due to the costs involved. In the mid to late 1900's local dance teachers could afford huge Studios. Today these are rare due to the cost and availability.

The face of ballet has changed. At the same time it has always been resistive to change thus the changes used to float across it's surface while its core remained the same. We must evolve in many ways for we cannot afford to do what we have done.

It is but a natural step in ballet evolution that it will flow into the new culture of the internet and in the traditions of ballet, this new step will be resisted. The tension created between absorbing and resisting change may produce a dynamic new form.

We must evolve or become extinct. Can we keep our roots while we evolve? If we can, how? As you consider these questions, I ask you again, please with sugar on top