One does not go to the ballet for a political showdown but, in among the dancing, that was what we got last night at the American Ballet Theatre’s The Nutcracker at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
According to the New York Times, “kids aside, the audience should be evenly split between harried Brooklyn moms and salivating balletomanes”. Yes, but I squeezed in too for what was a lovely new version choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky.
The excitement started even before the show when David H. Koch, the co-owner of Koch Industries, the largest privately-own industrial conglomerate in the US, came out on stage to talk about his $2.5m sponsorship of the production.
Most people applauded but there were also boos from near where I sat in the balcony, followed by an angry debate in the row in front of me, with one of the booers declaring “he’s an evil man” and a couple next to her telling her to “shut up” and to leave the theatre.Mr Koch was venturing into the lion’s den in political terms, since Brooklyn is solidly liberal and Democrat, whereas he and his brother are right-wing libertarian and are alleged to have links to the Tea Party movement, which they deny.
According to an article in the New Yorker magazine last August, Mr Koch stood in 1979 as a Libertarian Party vice-presidential candidate:
The Libertarian Party platform called for the abolition of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., as well as of federal regulatory agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Energy. The Party wanted to end Social Security, minimum-wage laws, gun control, and all personal and corporate income taxes; it proposed the legalization of prostitution, recreational drugs, and suicide. Government should be reduced to only one function: the protection of individual rights. William F. Buckley, Jr., a more traditional conservative, called the movement “Anarcho-Totalitarianism.”
The booers may also have been upset by the fact that Koch Industries, which operates oil refineries among other things, has been accused of being an industrial polluter, which it also contests.
Once Mr Koch had left the stage, the booing stopped and the ballet started.
