Trib Cracks Its Last Nut
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But some people think the Tribune’s passive marketing plan doomed the show. “The Nutcracker died of criminal neglect,” says Larry Long, the Ruth Page Foundation School of Dance choreographer who staged the show for Tribune Charities. According to Long, the Tribune Company seemed content to run display ads in its newspaper, seldom promoting guest dancers or devising new marketing tactics for the heightened competition. “The Tribune was really only interested in the ballet as a cash cow,” adds Long, who says last year’s production netted approximately $400,000 for charity despite dwindling attendance. Bierig disputed Long’s figure, however, claiming the profit was much lower.
But the end of the Tribune’s Nutcracker could be a blessing for the Joffrey Ballet. Joffrey executive director Robert Alpaugh says that early next year he’ll confer with artistic director Gerald Arpino and the board on the feasibility of moving their 1998 production to the Auditorium Theatre or the Civic Opera House for a two- or three-week engagement. The audience for the production at the Rosemont hasn’t grown much; its 16 performances in 1996 were halved to 8 in 1997, yet according to sources at the Joffrey and the Rosemont, box office revenue per show has increased only slightly.
Blackman expects the fair to be somewhat smaller than Art 1997 Chicago, which brought just over 200 exhibitors to Navy Pier last May, but the exhibitor overlap could be as much as 50 percent. The San Francisco fair will cover approximately 70,000 square feet, compared to 165,000 in Chicago. Blackman hopes to sign up between 85 and 100 dealers, about 30 percent of them from California, another 30 percent from the rest of the country, and most of the remainder from Europe and Asia. Because of the west-coast location he’s hoping to attract a particularly large contingent of Asian dealers.
