We've heard from our liaisons at the Canada Arts Council—and here's an example—about massaging our company to look at the percentage of grant money and income that's coming from other sources and pushing us to become ready to go into bigger fundraising projects which, as probably everyone here knows, is a big endeavour.
The American model.... When the bottom line is the most important, when selling tickets is the most important, something gets lost. Something that is very particular about Montreal is that there is an audience for all different types of dancing. Here we come talking about dance, and maybe some of you have very limited exposure to dance and you think, what is that dance and you imagine a ballet—and it is that. Or if you think modern, you think of people rolling around on the floor. It is that. If you think hip hop, you see people standing on their heads and spinning on their heads. It is that. You might think folkloric dances and ethnic. It is that. It's such a wide range and within all of those different ranges there is a space for it to be...we talk about these programs able to heal and to be about health.
There will be the money-makers who are all about the commercial aspect of entertainment for entertainment's sake. There also needs to be the freedom to explore artistically, where it's not so important if this is the next blockbuster.
What's special about Montreal, and I say this very often, is that there are audiences to go see the symphonic orchestra. There are also audiences to go see the most experimental digital musician. It's not in the same hall. You're not going to fill 3,000 seats with a guy on a computer experimenting with filters. But you will find 30 to 40 people in a studio loft listening, and that's their entertainment.
When you make the bottom line, do we sell tickets and is this the only way that we can make things happen.... I've seen that American model, and instead of this vast panoply of different aspects of dance, it becomes whittled down and it becomes one aspect of whether we can make it profitable.