ABSTRACT:

SARASOTA, Fla. – Over the weekend I traveled to Sarasota, Fla., to inspect a crisis about to happen in the ever-expanding world of American ballet. It is a crisis of audiences and repertory, people who want to see ballet and the ballets people want to see.

Audiences all over the country, all over the world in fact, are showing a marked preference for the full-evening ballet. One day perhaps the new one-act opera. Yet unlike opera, ballet doesn’t have a virtually infinite reserve of classics, nor are composers lining up to provide suitable evening-length ballet scores….