The forecast for the future of New York City looks to be doom and gloom.  But each cloud has a silver lining, and so far, this fall performance season has shown the gradient colors of silver that a cloud can carry.

New York City Ballet had one of their best fall seasons to date.  It was reported that attendance was at an all-time high compared to last year.  This is due to a few different reasons.  The quality of the performances was exceptionally high.  There were some nights at the ballet that, while the programming may have left more to be desired, the dancing was thrilling, and there was a palpable energy percolating from the stage.  The principal dancer, Sterling Hyltin, who retires this December with Nutcracker, bade farewell to many of the roles she was known for throughout her career.  Her dancing, which has always been iconoclastic, went even further, showing what a dancer could accomplish with no limits. This in turn, rubbed off on all the other dancers, which is probably why the performance quality was stellar.  There was a real go-for-broke energy that was palpable on stage, and made each performance feel alive and fresh.  

The biggest boon the New York City Ballet received however was in the score Solange Knowles had composed for the company for their 10^th anniversary Fall Fashion Gala.  Not only because she was the first woman of color to ever compose a score for the New York City Ballet, but because her sister, the one and only, Beyoncé, had attended and posted about the premiere of the work.  To the 280 million followers she has, that was a megaphone for the ballet like they’ve never had before.  The free advertisement paid off, and while by all accounts the ballet and the score itself were mediocre, each night the house had been entirely sold out, a phenomenon unlike any seen for any previous fall season.

It begs the question though: is it more important to sell seats, or create good ballets?  The answer may be a bit of both, and reminds one of the chicken and the egg, but at this time, it might be more wise to build an audience than a repertoire.  Come for snacks, stay for the show.