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 Old Mini-PollsOctober - December 1999 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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It's nice to reminisce and revel in our old polls be they very serious or a little more frivolous even. Hopefully we all learn something new. Enjoy....
20 December 1999 Well 35% of us spend less than £20 a ticket and nearly 70% of us spend less than £25 per ticket. Which means the average spend is around £22 or so. Only just over 10% of us spend more than £36. I guess we would all love to have better seats, but for many going so often inevitably means that something has to give.
From another Mini-poll we know that people go on average about 12 times a year - which gives an average spend of about £264. This assumes that both sets of respondents are the same - which is unlikely of course. Personally I think regular goers spend far more than that. But that's statistics for you!
13 December 1999 Perhaps the results may not be a surprise to most visitors, but I'm surprised that there was not a more emphatic vote for design being integral to all ballet and dance.
In a way I think its all rather axiomatic: dancers have to wear something and that something needs design - even the use of practice clothing is a design choice. And of course practice clothes vary.. so which practice clothes? And with design choice comes the ability to influence thoughts on the choreography....
3 December 1999 Well MacMillan did well didn't he! Nearly a 3 way tie for first place and all by MacMillan. The surprise, if you have not seen it, was the Gloria pdd and danced particularly well by Leanne Benjamin and Christopher Saunders. Bintley's Still Life at the Penguin Cafe obviously still holds power for audiences and I'm pleased that Ashley Page's Fearful Symmetries got some votes too (bet that shocked you!).
All in all a splendid opening to the house and nice that ballet fans all over the nation could see it. I still wish the Royal would tour in the UK, but in the absence of the money to do it, TV coverage at least allows some access. Lets hope there will be more live coverage...
22 November 1999 A fair spread of results and hard to know what conclusions to draw really. Other than death seems to inhabit an awful lot of the ballet and dance repertoire I suppose.
Personally I don't care what anybody says - I still feel that the most appropriate way to go is betwixt Lacarra's thighs in the Cage! (sad I know, but I've got to that stage in life where I don't give a damn!)
15 November 1999 In general the ones that nobody could possibly have seen got the most votes. I was particularly intrigued by Pavlova and how she sparked a young Frederick Ashton. But I would not complain about Nijinsky getting the top spot- if anybody changed the role of the male dancer forever it was him.
A little sad that Margot Fonteyn got not a vote, but I like to feel that everybody would want to see her again and luckily we have videos of course.
8 November 1999 Well if you assume that when people voted they meant the Ashton versions than Ashton carries off the prize by a mile. Perhaps a debatable point as to if he would have wanted the prize of course.. And thank goodness that only 1 in 20 of us think it all too silly and old. Probably more people get introduced to ballet and dance at this time of year than at any time and anything that encourages the country to go is to be applauded and taken seriously.
Hopefully Peter Pan might get a vote or two after the Atlanta Ballet season at the Festival Hall...
1 November 1999 Interesting results and it would be terrific to compare the consumers views with reality. At the top end little is known about what packages dancers get, though I think I recall reading about a BRB Principal getting around
As consumers we think the average should be
Wouldn't it be nice to poll the top 70 dancers?! Of course agreeing on who they are could take rather an age...
24 October 1999 Not quite sure what this one tells us other then not to go to Twyla Tharp for a full length ballet perhaps...
The Page and Bejart positions are more worrying. Bejart is a national institution in France and yet does not travel at all well to the UK. The Ashley Page result must be disappointing for all concerned. He seems to be constantly experimenting rather then trying to find something that might just get audiences more behind him. With money scarce this is not perhaps an enviable position to be in.
17 October 1999 Well perhaps no surprise for those who like and know the MacMillan repertoire. If you have not seen Manon then go see in the spring of 2000 at the Opera House.
Perhaps the real surprise is that 1 in 10 readers think that none of the full-length MacMillan works pass muster. The other interesting one is Isadora - I suspect that few of us have actually seen it...
10 October 1999 Well it has to be an odd list that unites Ashley Page, Balanchine, MacMillan and Mark Morris! Without wishing to be cruel, perhaps the latter three are the most interesting results. Morris is applauded by the critics, almost universally, but as I felt myself until quite recently, it's very easy to wonder what on earth all the fuss is about.
MacMillan has always had his detractors, most notably in the US, and yet his work is some of the most popular in the world. Balanchine of course is often cited as the greatest choreographer of the 20th Century... I wonder if the result is more a reflection of what we have seen of his works in Europe rather than based on knowledge of his wider repertoire and how it is performed by his own company (NYCB)? One of our most interesting polls I think.
3 October 1999 Perhaps it should be no surprise but the results show that over half of readers discover dance and ballet because of their family - either taking them or sending them to classes. Two things would seem to follow - parents, its your duty to take your kids to see lots of dance(!) and... marketers should concentrate a good proportion of budget targeting those who make decisions in families. I'm a bit worried about the 'others' coming in at number 3 - it shows the problem if you don't have the range of answers quite right.
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