Chapter 54 – Money Talks in the World of Art
Judging from the immediate response to the advertising blitz, two things are apparent about ballet dancers: they like money as much as the rest of us, and they don’t read very well. All of the ads clearly stated that prospective applicants should send their resume by email to:
[email protected]. She got a few resumes, but she got a flood of emails asking what the pay is. She answered these patiently and honestly, stating the salaries, per diem, and travel for principles and corps. She wondered if the $2000 per day for principles and $700 per day for corps was going to be enough.
Posing as a dancer, Gergiev sent an email asking about the compensation, and when he got the reply saying $2000 for principle dancers and $700 for corps dancers, he cursed just like Stirg had, but for a different reason. That was because he paid his principles $700 per day and his corps $300 per day. And he knew the rule that money talks in the world of art. He started worrying that some of his dancers might defect, even though the Charleston job would be temporary, and his job is permanent. Well, sort of permanent. Ballet dancers come, and ballet dancers go. Every year there is a new crop coming out of the training programs, and if one of them is better than an older dancer, the axe falls.
The Mariinsky dancers knew about this rule also, so the Charleston production pay looked very appealing to a few of them, regardless of the temporary status of the job. Another factor that appealed to some of them was the difference in style between the two competing shows. The ads clearly indicated that the Charleston production was to be modernist, with a world famous rock musician playing the entire score on synthesizer. They knew the Saint Petersburg production would be traditionalist, with the music played by an orchestra, and costumes done in the tutu style. The whole modernist approach was intriguing to some of those brought up in the strict Russian tradition.
Five days after the ads hit, the woman came out of her office with a stack of papers, which she dumped on one of the tables where Gale and Helstof were working. Where Helstof was working, and Gale was talking. She gathered the team around the table and pointed towards the papers, saying, “The response is pretty good. I’ve gotten sixteen resumes and about forty-five emails asking questions, mostly about the pay, but some about the music, and some about the choreography, and some asking who, exactly, we are. I’ve answered the others, but the ones wanting to know about us, I haven’t. Who are we, anyway?”
The Ps looked at each other, and the costumers looked at each other, and Selgey, Bart and Townshend looked at each other, which left Roger and Gwen looking at each other. The second conundrum the group had faced in a week, the first being the name of the ballet. Pater said, “We are….”
Then Gale said, “We are….”
And Bart said, “We are….”
Gwen waited. She didn’t want to blurt out the name she had given the group when Catherine did her advocacy thing at the City’s PR event. If the others didn’t remember it from back then, maybe it wasn’t such a great name. When no one offered a name, she said, “When Le Monde called Catherine two months ago, they wanted the name of the production and the name of our group. I told them The Charleston Ballet Guild. If you guys have a better name, I’m open to it.
Peter said, “Oh, yeah, I remember that. Funny how we’ve gone two months without really needing a name. Until now. I like The Charleston Ballet Guild.” He looked around, and the others nodded.
“Now that we know who we are, who’s going to start reading the resumes? Who’s going to choose the dancers?” said the woman. All heads swiveled to Selgey and Bart. There wasn’t anyone else, so they nodded assent. More work. The woman handed them the stack of resumes.
Selgey glanced through them, and shook her head. “Nothing here. Not what we want.”
Gwen looked at her, then got up and walked over to the synthe. She said to The Whosey, “May I?” Surprised, he nodded, and after flipping a few switches that set the synthe to sound like an electric piano, she played Gershwin’s “Summertime”. None of the group, except Roger, knew she played keyboards, but she didn’t have the Steinway in her living room just for looks.
Halfway through, Roger said, to no one in particular, “Do you know Gershwin composed that song here, in Charleston?”
Townshend shook his head, no, then said, “Didn’t know that. But I do know who’s done the best rendition of it. The Zombies, with Rod Argent singing and playing electric piano. Dynamite.”
Gwen finished the beautiful song and stood up, looking back across the stage to the group. She waited, waited, then slowly walked back to them. Standing, she said, “Who stole the artifacts from the Hermitage?”
The Ps said, “We did.”
“And then who stole the artifacts from us?”
“Stirg.”
“And then who stole the Stravinsky score from us?”
“Stirg.”
“So, it’s two to one in thefts. What do y’all think about evening the score?”
Gale had known Gwen for quite a few years, and the Russians had known her for a year, and Selgey and Bart had known her for six months. But all of them were surprised by what she said. Not Roger. He knew her well, and loved her well, and thought she was the hottest woman on the face of the earth, because she did stuff like this. He had an idea of what was coming, and sat back, smiling. God, he loved his Gwenny.
She said, “Well. Do you want to get even with Stirg?”
Once again the Ps looked at each other, and the costumers looked at each other, and Selgey, Bart and Townshend looked at each other. All of them were calculating the odds that this would end in gunfire, death, and destruction. At the same time, they all computed the feeling of satisfaction that would accrue from getting even with Stirg for stealing the score from them, which they had stolen from the Russian people. Their project would be a lot easier if they weren’t competing against the Russian production. Well, maybe a little easier.
Gale said, “What do you have in mind?”
“Look. We don’t know for sure what Stirg is doing, but I would bet the ranch he is going to hire the Mariinsky company to do his production. That’s where he is now, Saint Petersburg, and he’s not there for his health.” The others waited for the punch line. “So, why don’t we steal the dancers? Stealing the dancers from the Mariinsky is stealing them from him.”
There was silence for a moment, and then Bart said, “What do you mean? How do you steal people? You mean we hire them away from the Mariinsky. Will that work?”
Helstof spoke up for the first time. “We have lots of money, but so does Stirg. He has as much as us. If we offer to pay the dancers more than they’re earning now, he’ll raise the ante. And they have permanent jobs there. Ours is temporary. Why would they want to give that up?”
When Gwen glanced at The Whosey, Roger understood where his wife was going with this. He said, “Let’s see if I can guess. Helstof is right about the money angle. We have no advantage there over Stirg. Whatever we offer the dancers, he can offer the same. So it has to be something we have that they don’t, and that they can’t just go out and buy. What is that?” And now he looked at The Whosey. What did he represent? Townshend was in his sixties, but he was an artist, and had been his whole life. And art is all about the new. New things, new ideas, new ways of looking at life. Artists, on the whole, stay young their whole lives. That’s not always good for them and the people around them, but for better or worse, it’s the way of art. Townshend was a young minded man. Roger went on, “We have something they can’t buy and can’t produce. We have the future. The future of ballet. We’re doing a new style production, and the Mariinsky is old style. Traditional.” He paused, then said, “Selgey, how old are the Mariinsky dancers?”
“All the corps dancers are in their twenties. The principles will range from mid-twenties to early thirties. There are a few older principles out there, around the
world, like the amazing Anna Ananiashvili, who still is dancing in her mid-forties, but that is rare.”
“So they’re young, and they’re dancing traditional. What we can offer them is to dance for the future, rather than the past. We’re doing the music like no one has done it before. We have this man,” looking at Townshend, “who is taking Stravinsky’s music from 1914 and playing it electronically, through his own interpretation, the way jazz musicians take a structured melody and improvise on it. The Mariinsky managers are not going to do that over there. Am I on the right track with this, Gwen?”
“Yes, that’s my thinking. We appeal to that mentality in the Mariinsky dancers. Art for the future. And there’s more. We modernize the music, appeal to young dancers, and market to a younger audience. Don’t we owe that to our culture? To lead young people to great art?” She looked at the woman. “Can we do that? Can we market to youth, at least part of the production, while keeping the performance standard at the highest level?”
The woman said, “Ballet audiences generally are older. Conservative. All around the world. What you’re proposing will be difficult, but not impossible. A lot depends on the style of the music, and the marketing.”
Selgey got out of her chair and walked around the stage for a minute. She came back to the group and said, “So we’re offering the Mariinsky dancers good pay, and the opportunity to perform in a production with a modern slant on a newly discovered piece of Stravinsky music, that is targeted, at least in part, to a younger audience. An audience of their peers, rather than a traditional audience of older people. Is that enough? What else? Why would they leave the security of the Mariinsky, for that?”
Bart said, looking at Gwen, “It’s risky, Gwen. You want to go to all that trouble, just to stick it to Stirg? It may not work. The dancers may not leave and come to us. It’s risky.”
Gwen said, “So what else is new?”