I'm with you on this, Dave. Football in the U.S.--more than Soccer, which is what we call your Football, basketball and baseball--are the three pillars of a big industry--Sports. Sports includes ticket sales, apparel, equipment, but players do endorsements for major products (not just sports-related)and betting/gambling syndicates are the illegal arm of big business tied to sports. A lot rides on this and the players are paid obscenely well because without them the above-mentioned enterprises would not exist. While athletes train just as dancers do, usually the bill for that training is also footed by business sponsors. Dance, as we know, while requiring more precision training and more training period and requiring artistic talent in addition to athletic talent, is "rewarded" with living a marginal existence--financially, socially and psychologically. How to tip the balance in favor of dance?

Put money into the arts and reduce the lavish "living large" bucks spent in and around the sports industry. Personally, I don't think that can be accomplished in a big business-run society. So those of us in the arts have to keep the pressure on to adjust the relationship of forces. One important arena is youth: bring the arts into the schools, and recruit boys to dance. The less dance is viewed as a silly, frivolous passtime and the more it is taken seriously as an art form, the better armed we will be to win the battle.
