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Ashton Mixed Bill Summer 2017


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I assume that the ROH makes 'more of a profit' because by holding back tickets it prevents the agencies from buying blocks of tickets and then selling them to people who would otherwise have bought direct from the ROH. However, this strategy will backfire if people seeking tickets for sold-out performances don't think to recheck the ROH site at regular intervals to see if tickets have become available.

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12 minutes ago, aileen said:

I assume that the ROH makes 'more of a profit' because by holding back tickets it prevents the agencies from buying blocks of tickets and then selling them to people who would otherwise have bought direct from the ROH. However, this strategy will backfire if people seeking tickets for sold-out performances don't think to recheck the ROH site at regular intervals to see if tickets have become available.

Which raises further questions:

 

why does ROH need to use ticket agencies when most of their performances are sellouts?

 

Most people, ballet forum nerds excepted, do not have the time or the inclination to spend their days continually logging n to the ROH website.  There is surely a bond of trust between the public and the Bix Office which will be broken if we can no longer believe what they say.  Either a production is sold out, pending returns, or it isn't.

 

clarification please, ROH box office.

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Hello Lull and welcome to the Forum!

 

I recently fell foul of dynamic pricing in a different way.  I know the Liverpool Playhouse (as do many theatres these days) charges more for Friday and Saturday evening performances but I was not expecting to pay £28 for a last minute Friday ticket when I had paid £16 for a Tuesday ticket for the same performance.

 

I was told that they charged more for tickets the closer they got to the performance if it was one that was selling heavily!  So how do they explain that away in their brochures that print the performance prices???

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Hi Janet,

 

The uglier side of dynamic pricing which you described is very common here in America. I know it works because companies talk all the time about how it maximizes profits but it never works on me. I get turned away by the higher prices because I feel like it's a scam.

 

You'll often find in the brochures, "Tickets from $$" instead of "Tickets $$-$$" and that can be a clue.

 

Here in Washington DC, I thought about supporting my local ballet company (it numbers 20 dancers and performs to recorded music) but when I went to buy a last minute ticket in the back row of the theater it was selling for $90 when the best seats in the orchestra had gone for $22 just days ago. The theater was about a third of a way empty just a few hours before the show. I presume it stayed that way but maybe some were lured in by their pricing model? It seems to makes more financial sense for me to buy a $100 orchestra ticket and a $10 round trip bus ticket to see American Ballet Theatre or New York City Ballet with better dancers and live music.

 

The Royal Ballet is likely under pressure from vendors who follow this pricing model. They can cap their prices but still give into holding blocks of tickets to create an artificial demand that benefits both parties but not the audience.

Edited by lull
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4 hours ago, lull said:

Hi Janet,

 

The uglier side of dynamic pricing which you described is very common here in America. I know it works because companies talk all the time about how it maximizes profits but it never works on me. I get turned away by the higher prices because I feel like it's a scam.

 

You'll often find in the brochures, "Tickets from $$" instead of "Tickets $$-$$" and that can be a clue.

 

Here in Washington DC, I thought about supporting my local ballet company (it numbers 20 dancers and performs to recorded music) but when I went to buy a last minute ticket in the back row of the theater it was selling for $90 when the best seats in the orchestra had gone for $22 just days ago. The theater was about a third of a way empty just a few hours before the show. I presume it stayed that way but maybe some were lured in by their pricing model? It seems to makes more financial sense for me to buy a $100 orchestra ticket and a $10 round trip bus ticket to see American Ballet Theatre or New York City Ballet with better dancers and live music.

 

The Royal Ballet is likely under pressure from vendors who follow this pricing model. They can cap their prices but still give into holding blocks of tickets to create an artificial demand that benefits both parties but not the audience.

That is incredible.

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1 hour ago, penelopesimpson said:

That is incredible.

 

Just trying to make sense of this theory in a Royal Opera House context:--

 

* Lets assume that Lull is on to something and that some ROH tickets end up with a vendor who uses dynamic pricing (we know the ROH does not use it directly but only sells tickets at fixed face value)

 

* So if ROH shows a performance as "Sold out" this will encourage people to buy tickets at higher prices elsewhere.

 

* So if the ROH eventually gets unsold tickets back from this vendor (which, the theory goes, is what has just happened) the trade off for the ROH can only be:-

 

WE AT ROH MAKE SO MUCH MORE MONEY FROM OUR CUT OF SOME OVERPRICED SEATS THAT IT IS WORTH US ENDING UP WITH SEATS UNSOLD AT NORMAL PRICES.

 

Does that make sense?

Edited by Geoff
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36 minutes ago, Geoff said:

* So if ROH shows a performance as "Sold out" this will encourage people to buy tickets at higher prices elsewhere.

 

* So if the ROH eventually gets unsold tickets back from this vendor (which, the theory goes, is what has just happened) the trade off for the ROH can only be:-

 

WE AT ROH MAKE SO MUCH MORE MONEY FROM OUR CUT OF SOME OVERPRICED SEATS THAT IT IS WORTH US ENDING UP WITH SEATS UNSOLD AT NORMAL PRICES.

 

Does that make sense?

 

In theory, this behavior should drive demand among the audience. Showing sold out on the ROH website should drive more people to use the overpriced vendor (this worked on Penelope's friend) at the time and then also work on people who only get around to checking on tickets from the ROH website closer to the date of the peformance.

 

Penelope, you mentioned something like... most ROH shows sell out anyway... but this strategy may be the reason why they shift so many tickets lately.

 

Picking aspects of dynamic pricing does not work for everyone. Famously, the Met Opera's interpretion of this model was mostly just raising their ticket prices by 10%! Needless to say, they backed away from the strategy and issued sort of an apology in the press when it affected their bottom line negatively.

Edited by lull
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If agencies can return tickets, they're not actually 'sold' - they're being supplied on a sale or return basis which is not the same as a hard sale. So saying a performance is 'sold out' would not be correct information.

Edited by bridiem
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13 hours ago, lull said:

 

In theory, this behavior should drive demand among the audience. Showing sold out on the ROH website should drive more people to use the overpriced vendor (this worked on Penelope's friend) at the time and then also work on people who only get around to checking on tickets from the ROH website closer to the date of the peformance.

 

Penelope, you mentioned something like... most ROH shows sell out anyway... but this strategy may be the reason why they shift so many tickets lately.

 

Picking aspects of dynamic pricing does not work for everyone. Famously, the Met Opera's interpretion of this model was mostly just raising their ticket prices by 10%! Needless to say, they backed away from the strategy and issued sort of an apology in the press when it affected their bottom line negatively.

I am probably being dense/having a senior moment, BUT I cannot fathom how driving purchasers to use ticket  agencies benefits ROH.. can anyone take pity on the elderly and explain?

Edited by penelopesimpson
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A number of Grand Tier front row seats now available for the Ferri matinee. I have booked accommodation for the Thursday or would change my ticket to sit where I wanted. Anyway, you takes your chances and all that.

I noticed there were quite a lot of good seats for the Vertiginous Thrill Bill matinee with Osipova. I am almost tempted but not at all sure about this programme as the Strapless reviews were so negative before. 

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9 hours ago, Jacqueline said:

A number of Grand Tier front row seats now available for the Ferri matinee. I have booked accommodation for the Thursday or would change my ticket to sit where I wanted. Anyway, you takes your chances and all that.

I noticed there were quite a lot of good seats for the Vertiginous Thrill Bill matinee with Osipova. I am almost tempted but not at all sure about this programme as the Strapless reviews were so negative before. 

If it's of any help, Jacqueline, I saw Strapless first time around and won't be returning for seconds.  I found it all over the place with next to nothing for the blokes, including Ed Watson, to do, and even Osipova wasn't enough to sustain interest.  I think it should be quietly written off and forgotten about.

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11 hours ago, penelopesimpson said:

If it's of any help, Jacqueline, I saw Strapless first time around and won't be returning for seconds.  I found it all over the place with next to nothing for the blokes, including Ed Watson, to do, and even Osipova wasn't enough to sustain interest.  I think it should be quietly written off and forgotten about.

Thank you for the advice. I am inclined to give it a miss as I assume the rest of the bill must be quite short, minus the interval padding, so not worth all the travelling and expense for me.

Edited by Jacqueline
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I suspect that the reason that Strapless is being revived is that it is a co-production with the Bolshoi, and as such it is  presumably felt that time should be given to trying to make it work. The problem is that there is little of substance in it dramatically or choreographically. If it was intended as a vehicle for Osipova which would enable her to make an appearance at the Bolshoi in something worthy of her then, in its current form, it is a failure. Ashton's comment about his Marguerite and Armand was that it did not matter if a ballet was a vehicle as long as it goes and with the right dancers Marguerite and Armand still goes. . 

 

So does Strapless "go"? Wheeldon has selected a story that will not work today as the mores of the society in which the events occurred are even more remote to us than all those references to Ovid which were so exercising the director of the RSC this morning. But allowing for that I am far from sure that it is the sort of story that was ever suited to balletic treatment.For me the piece really exposes Wheeldon's inadequacies as a creator of characters through body language and gesture.Dressing them in Singer Sargent inspired costumes is not quite enough to give them the characters the individuality which they need or make the piece work. The story line is negligible the cafe scene looks horribly like a choreographic off cut from An American in Paris a piece of scene setting which feels more suited to a Broadway musical or a Massine ballet entertainment set in "Gay Paree" than a ballet set in the specific historical period of la Belle Epoque. Strapless requires radical reworking rather than mere "tweaking". Having said that the other works in the programme particularly Scarlett's new work for Yanowsky have persuaded me to attend a couple of performances and who knows perhaps a miracle will take place and Strapless will be transformed. 

 

The Ashton mixed bill is far more enticing than the Strapless one looks like being. I just hope that Symphonic Variations is not compromised by being treated as a training opportunity for young dancers as it was when it was last revived in 2014.While I have mixed feelings about whether Marguerite and Armand should ever have been revived I somehow feel that after seeing Strapless again I am going to look at Ashton's ballet with new eyes  when it is next seen at Covent Garden if only because it is an effective theatrical vehicle which does  precisely what it was intended to do. In other words it is a vehicle which goes.

 

 

  .

 

Edited by FLOSS
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Slightly OT but the last 2 times I've been ROH there has been a man with clip board outside ROH main doors to the left in the corner handing out tickets to people - what's going on there?

I noticed that BRB is selling slowly in Bristol for Coppelia so I am holding off booking and hoping for a last minute cheap ticket as I am there anyway as last year I got a good Taming Shrew ticket for £16.....

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9 hours ago, David said:

Didn't I read somewhere that Kevin O'Hare said that Strapless was going to be significantly re-tweaked this time around? Or am I mixing it up with something else?

Hmm.  Tweaking and significant seem somewhat incompatible in describing a ballet that really doesn't work on any level.  It wasn't definite enough to be described as bad in the manner of Carlos Acosta's Carmen, just a rather small and irritating blur which allowed my mind to wander contemplating the cost of a failed outing.

Edited by penelopesimpson
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3 minutes ago, Don Q Fan said:

Slightly OT but the last 2 times I've been ROH there has been a man with clip board outside ROH main doors to the left in the corner handing out tickets to people - what's going on there?

I noticed that BRB is selling slowly in Bristol for Coppelia so I am holding off booking and hoping for a last minute cheap ticket as I am there anyway as last year I got a good Taming Shrew ticket for £16.....

 

 

Ooh, tell me more.

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12 minutes ago, Don Q Fan said:

Slightly OT but the last 2 times I've been ROH there has been a man with clip board outside ROH main doors to the left in the corner handing out tickets to people - what's going on there?

....

 

I think that this has been mentioned on another thread. People seem to buy tickets on a 'group' basis and advertise them online in the form of an 'event'. The location you speak of is where the members of the group are asked to meet up with the organiser.

 

But I know that someone will correct me if I am mistaken.

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