Chapter 58 – Strategy for Stealing the Dancers
The team members stood up in the circle of chairs, thinking the meeting was over, when Gwen said, “Not so fast. Sit down. We have another issue to resolve, a more important issue. I told you all not to come out of the office until you figured out how to steal the Mariinsky dancers. Since you’re out of the office, I assume you’ve completed the task.” She looked at the woman.
The woman truly had enjoyed the previous meeting task, right up to the moment when Selgey stopped Bart from trying on the costumes, when her enjoyment turned to disappointment. Now her disappointment turned to apprehension. Oh, yeah, steal the Russian dancers. Right. The last thing she’d stolen was a stem with four grapes on it from the produce section of Whole Foods, and that was six years ago. She thought Gwen was using the word steal figuratively, but sometimes, at night, she wasn’t sure. Gwen was not like other women.
She rallied and said, “It all comes down to money, really. To job security. We can appeal to their sense of art, community, the future of ballet, which is what we talked about before. Targeting younger people for our audience rather than the usual older and more conservative aficionados. But we decided that, alone, was not going to work. Being a dancer is to live in an insecure world. Most dancers that make it to the professional level have short careers. Ten years. Then someone younger comes along and takes that slot. Someone willing to abuse themselves more, physically and mentally. So, when a dancer gets a slot at a place like the Mariinsky, they try to stay there for as long as they can. They want the work and they need the paycheck.” She looked at the Ps, Selgey, and Bart for confirmation, which she got.
“So, we have to do something with money. If you really want to try to stick it to Stirg with this, and get some of the Mariinskyites to do our production, rather than their production, it means big money. And that may not be enough, because their side has big money, too.”
Pater said, “We have one thing in our favor. We talked about job security for them if they defect, and what that means. It means guaranteeing them an income for some period of time, say three or four years, after our production. Either we just pay them a pension, and let them leave after our show, or we start a new company, for real, and they are the entire corps. For that option, we’re talking millions, per year, for so many years. Are we ready to commit to that? Is Helstof and Henric ready to commit to that?”
Peter took over the explanation. “The advantage we have is that if Stirg tried to offer them the same thing, but more, he would face the Russian political machine that runs the whole cultural system over there. Those people would not just let the dancers sit there at the Mariinsky, earning big salaries, even if Stirg is paying them. That would mess up the whole machine they have in place. We don’t face that here. We can pay them off with a pension, or start the new company. If we pay them off, they can go look for dancing jobs with other companies, and live off the pension; have their cake and eat it too. That wouldn’t happen over there, and that’s our advantage. And appealing to their sense of performing for a younger generation.”
The woman felt relief at this explanation, which had been hanging over her head. These were the best options they could come up with: pension off the dancers for three or four years, or start a new company. She smiled at the four dancers.
Gwen looked around at the others, and waited for comments. After a minute of silence, it was obvious no one objected, or had a better idea. She nodded, and then stared at the floor for another minute. When she looked up, she said, “Well, there is one other way. We could kidnap them.”