; "P.E.I. ballet dancer and opera singer react to Timothée Chalamet diss | CBC News")
P.E.I. ballet dancer and opera singer react to Timothée Chalamet diss | CBC News
Lovers of the arts seem to have turned on Timothée Chalamet faster than you can say “fouetté” following recent comments he made bashing ballet and opera.
While talking to actor Matthew McConaughey about keeping movie theatres alive at a recent CNN and Variety town hall event, Chalamet said he doesn’t “want to be working in ballet or opera,” which he said “no one cares about” anymore.
Although he earned laughs from the live audience at the time, and added that he gives “all respect to the ballet and opera people out there,” his comments have since gone viral — and they’ve been met with swift backlash.
Critics of Chalamet — who’s Oscar-nominated for best actor this year for his leading role in Marty Supreme — have proven one thing to be true: people do care about the centuries-old art forms that endure in theatres and performance halls around the world.
Mainstreet PEI14:44Does anyone care about the opera or ballet?
Are opera and ballet dying art forms? Timothee Chalamet thinks so, or at least that’s what he said in an interview that has since gone viral. We speak with P.E.I. opera singer Hannah O’Donnell, and ballerina and teacher Kylie Jensen.
For Hannah O’Donnell, a Prince Edward Island-based opera singer, Chalamet’s suggestion that these fields are being artificially propped up was a low blow for a “cheap laugh.”
“Nobody sat me down and said, ‘You have to love opera. This is your job.’ It’s something that I came to because I grew passionate about it and I’ve put an incredible amount of time and effort into making that my craft,” the mezzo-soprano singer told Mainstreet P.E.I. host Nicola MacLeod.
“It’s alive and it’s well and people continue to show up for it and be changed by it and love it.”
When it comes to film — Chalamet’s medium of choice — the influence of art forms like ballet, opera and musical theatre can’t be ignored, O’Donnell said.
“Where do you think that came from? It came from a desire to put those arts on a screen so that everybody could see them and everybody could access them because they love them and they want to.”
When Timothée Chalamet recently made comments at a town hall for Variety and CNN, some people weren’t very happy. He said “no one cares” about ballet and opera anymore. We talked to teens in Toronto, Ontario, to find out what they think about ballet, opera and Chalamet’s now-viral comments.
In financial terms, it’s true that ballet has struggled, said Kylie Jensen, the co-owner and director of Alignment Dance Arts and Charlottetown Contemporary Dancers in P.E.I.’s capital city.
But most people don’t pursue a career in the arts simply for the money-making potential, she said.
“The cultural history that passes through when you’re learning something that has been passed down and whether you go to then turn it into a career and make money off of it is totally irrelevant,” Jensen said.
“People are always going to be employed with ballet. They’re always going to be dancing, and while it isn’t making as much money as someone who’s doing a multimillion-dollar movie, it’s going to continue always.”
For O’Donnell, the question of financial success is an interesting one, particularly considering how unevenly it is applied to different fields.
“Are people professional athletes to make money? In the grand scheme of things, unless you have a brilliant contract … you’re really not,” she said, noting much of the money that comes from athletics is from endorsements and advertising.
She said it’s important to recognize that receiving funding — either through arts grants, government programs or heritage designations — doesn’t mean that something isn’t legitimately worthy or great.
“Something being funded is because we have decided that it’s an important thing to have.… That doesn’t mean nobody cares about it,” Jensen said.
“It actually means that we care about it a lot, even in the face of capitalism that tells us that it’s not valuable.”
On the one hand, O’Donnell said she doesn’t want to bring more attention to Chalamet’s comments — but on the other, it’s been “awesome to laugh in the face of your haters.”
Chalamet’s name has been used as a discount code by ballet and opera companies, including the Seattle opera, which offered a 14 per cent discount — a nod to the “14 cents in viewership” Chalamet predicted his comments would cause him to lose.
Other companies joked that they would offer Chalamet free tickets, but couldn’t because the performances had already sold out, O’Donnell said.
“There are lots of people who sing and love and care about opera, not only as performers, but as appreciators all over the world,” she said.
The same is true for ballet, said Jensen.
“People know who ballerinas are now and they never used to,” she said, citing examples of Anna Pavlova, Tiler Peck and Misty Copeland.
“That is living. That is ballet being alive and well.”
Even in a hypothetical world where performance halls and theatres were empty with no tickets sold, dance and opera companies still employ hundreds of people who are involved in productions that matter to them, she said.
“It’s not that nobody cares about it. It’s just that you don’t care about it. And that’s fine — you don’t have to care about it — but that doesn’t change the validity of it being an art form that will always continue,” Jensen said.
“I think it’s funny saying he doesn’t want to work in ballet or opera.
“No one’s asking you to.”