When performance is on the edge of dying
by Nahia Onchalo–Meynard
“I do not want to be working in ballet or opera, where it is: keep this thing alive, even though no one cares about it any more’. On March 5, during an interview at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, USA, French-American actor and producer Timothee Chalamet let out the previous words; what a slippery slope to go down. Indeed, no more than 10 days before the Oscars ceremony, a wave of criticism regarding his statement shook the internet. However, for better or worse, the Oscars nominee did a great service to those arts often relegated to the background by shedding light on them.
Context is needed before completely tearing down Chalamet’s statement. Indeed, opera and ballet statistically are no competition to the cinematic industry. As prestigious, elitist and respected as they can be, ballet only sold around 10 million tickets in 2025, which is 75 times less than movie tickets; opera is even less frequented with only around two million tickets sold per year. It also provides much less opportunities: the average 2,000 opera performances a year and 5,000 dance spectacles are nowhere near the yearly 70 million screenings. Cinema did undergo a drastic decline of attendance since the 1980s because of television, home screenings and streaming platforms. However, it still impressively surpasses forms of arts that have been existing for centuries.
This success is mainly due to how accessible a movie screening is. It is also proof of constant technological progress, appealing to many. Moreover, as the movie industry grew, the star system developed as comedians became more famous, mainstream, inspirational, and closer to their audience, thereby creating a parasocial relationship between them and their audience. Worshipping the given public image of an individual became a rite of passage so as to truly belong to this higher, more prestigious universe. While actors bet on the control of their expressions as well as their understanding of the various personalities, dancers and opera singers rely on their bodies. This relegates ballet and opera to a much more unstable and ephemeral type of art, fading as the artists’ age grows. The dwindling support and stereotypical image that it receives also contributes to audiences being too small to fund big productions, leaving companies saddled with debts or relying on sponsors.
Nevertheless, if one pays more attention to the occupancy rate according to the capacity, opera sessions are 75% full on average per representation, and ballet can go up to 90%, making the 20% average attendance rate of movie screenings look like cinema is the art “no one cares about any more.” The screenings are, of course, consequently more numerous, but this only showcases the strong cleavage between the seventh art and ballet or opera. The latter are not arts in which people are disinterested, they are however embodiments of a higher society, an elite, a world hardly accessible and understandable to those unacquainted with such pieces. But as much as this universe is hard to reach and fully explore, it cannot be dying; it is the very expression of livelihood, of movement, of change, of humanity. Born out of a need to express oneself in unique ways, mainstream cinema and such rigorous and historically significant forms of art cannot compare when it comes to expressing the singularity of the human body and its feelings. It is not one or the other; they are complementary, carrying a different perspective, a different story, a different background, a different technique and a different passion to one single goal: expression.
However, if Chalamet’s intervention has proven useful in any kind, it is by unexpectedly bringing the attention back to ballet and opera. By being triggered on such a matter, the public questioned its relation to other, more unmediatized art forms, noticing what importance it really had. How ballet and opera shaped tastes, personalities, careers or habits has indeed resurfaced as a collective call for the protection of those art forms.
Therefore, as much as opera and ballet’s audience unfortunately decreases, the cinematic industry is not thriving either; the downfall is collective. The question — as for now — is not if one wants to be working in the classical dance and music industries, but rather if one will be able to be working for them.
