Can't we have beauty, too?

On the climate protest at New York City Ballet.

On Tuesday, New York City Ballet opened its spring season with an all-Balanchine program, featuring the classic Stravinsky ballet Apollo, the refined Ballo Della Regina, the nuanced Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, and the regal Chaconne, and—for this performance only—an interruption by anonymous protestors from the climate change-focused activist group Extinction Rebellion.

According to reports of the disruption published by the New York Times and amNY, protestors stood in front of the theater before the show, holding signs reading “No billionaire ballet on Earth Day” and “4°C 1 Billion Dead.” During Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, protesters in the third tier of the audience unraveled a banner, reading “No dance on a dead planet,” and shouted “We are here on behalf of Mother Earth!” According to the NYT, the protester also yelled, “Our country has become a fascist regime, and we are enjoying this beauty.” Dancers and the orchestra continued until the curtain ultimately came down, the protesters were removed, and the piece restarted.

I found out about this demonstration because Extinction Rebellion emailed me a press release sharing what they had done.

While we haven’t spoken about Extinction Rebellion here before, we have discussed Just Stop Oil many times. Both environmental groups are known for their nonviolent protests (often in and around art museums), which have elicited criticism, even from those who may advocate for their cause. It should go without saying, but in case it is not already obvious, I am aligned with the cause. I believe that climate change is an urgent threat. I literally took the LSAT and applied to law school in 2020 with the ambition of becoming an environmental lawyer (an ambition I eventually abandoned for reasons that are more personal and related to a quarter-life crisis, but you get the point). You may also recall that Just Stop Oil recently said it would stop its demonstrations in the U.K. as its demands had largely been met in that country.

In its press release, Extinction Rebellion writes, “Pushing back on the draconian, authoritarian policies of the Trump administration is more crucial than ever.” It shares several statistics about climate change and existential climate forecasts. It lists its demands as follows:

• Cultural institutions must take responsibility by leading efforts to address the climate emergency. Their silence or inaction equates to complicity in the ongoing ecological disaster. These institutions have the potential and the duty to guide society through this critical period.

• Inaction is equivalent to support when structures are actively falling apart. Cultural institutions' complicity encourages and promotes the Trump administration's policies. These institutions are capable of leading us through this craziness. However if they stay silent and do not lead, they are a cog in Trump's machine.

• Extinction Rebellion has a model, the citizen's assembly, which provides a structured way of leading us through confusing and novel circumstances. Additionally, cultural institutions should purposefully insulate themselves better from the structures that created Trump: an end to relying on billionaires for funding and support.

• Doing no more than marching or posting pictures on social media, too, is not enough to prevent the onslaught of climate disaster that awaits. Institutions that support the people will supplant the state institutions that are showing the failings that the climate movement has long warned about.

Extinction Rebellion has protested during performing arts programming before. In 2023, it interrupted a performance of Wagner’s Tannhäuser at the Met Opera (unfurling, then, a banner reading “No opera on a dead planet.”). It also notably protested a performance of Enemy of the People on Broadway last year—a very meta protest, given that the Ibsen play is about a man’s attempt to fight for environmental justice.

So why target New York City Ballet?

Ostensibly, the biggest qualm I immediately understood Extinction Rebellion to have with City Ballet is the fact that its theater is named after David H. Koch, the right wing billionaire who donated $100M to Lincoln Center in 2008 (along with several other arts and cultural institutions around New York City, including the Met Museum). The Koch family made its money on crude oil refinement; in addition to funding the arts, David H. Koch also poured money into conservative causes, including those that countered the truth of climate change. He died in 2019. At the time of his donation to Lincoln Center, Koch stipulated that a new donor could take over naming rights after 50 years, the New York Times previously reported.

Across the art world, we’ve seen many protests against another family who spent millions of dollars plastering their names on museum walls: the Sacklers. In recent years, several institutions, including the Met, have responded to those protests by removing that name and promising not to accept any further funding from the family. The idea is that the Sacklers were “reputation laundering”—associating their name with cultural institutions in order to cover up those actions that might be more contentious (such as causing the opioid crisis).

When it comes to the arts, funding is tenuous for many reasons. First, there’s the fact that government money for the arts, as I’ve been reporting for months now, is dwindling worldwide. There’s also the omnipresent concern that donors may politically impact an institution. As far as Koch goes, environmental scientist Cristián Samper, who was the director of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History when the late billionaire donated $20M to establish a dinosaur wing under his name, told the NYT in 2019: “He was a really great donor in that he supported and trusted you, but never in any way tried to insert his own points of view,” adding that Koch was generally “hands off.” It is unclear what involvement, if any, the Koch family may have with New York City Ballet today. Neither the family, nor the David H. Koch Foundation, are listed on City Ballet’s Special Thanks page, though I’ll admit I can’t find a program around my apartment to cross reference the pages of small-print donor names.

So what, exactly, was Extinction Rebellion asking of New York City Ballet and Lincoln Center with this demonstration? I wasn’t sure, so I asked. Here are my exchanges, lightly edited for brevity, with a spokesperson.

I first asked:

1. Can you tell me why New York City Ballet specifically was chosen for this demonstration? Are there any specific climate measures Extinction Rebellion feels NYCB is not taking?

2. Is there any guidance, or specific asks that Extinction Rebellion has for New York City Ballet and other cultural institutions? If so, are these specific asks available anywhere for public reference?

3. Was the intention of this demonstration more directed at NYCB as an institution or at the patrons of NYCB?

A spokesperson responded, in part:

The New York City Ballet takes money from the Koch brothers, who have
engaged and supported the permanent destruction of the earth resulting
in the climate chaos that is all around us every single day. In this
political moment, it is more important than ever that cultural
institutions use their power as a cultural institution to build power
outside of the failing state. However, even if they hadn't there would
still be no dance on a dead planet! Climate catastrophe is coming for
everything we love, including ballet.

Inaction is equivalent to support when structures are actively falling
apart. Cultural institutions' complicity encourages and promotes the
Trump administration's policies. These institutions are capable of
leading us through this craziness. However if they stay silent and do
not lead, they are a cog in Trump's machine.

I then asked: Are there any specific actions Extinction Rebellion is requesting of NYCB, especially given that David Koch died in 2019 and made his $100M donation to Lincoln Center in 2008?

To which the spokesperson responded: “It would be nice to talk to NYCB and have a discussion about what a cultural institution could be capable of doing.”

I followed-up: Did Extinction Rebellion attempt contact with NYCB or Lincoln Center to start a conversation before last night's protest?

They responded: “We have engaged with Lincoln Center in the past. Some XR members are also NYCB members, who likely have engaged as well. Letter writing campaigns have existed for decades, and yet we are still barreling towards further climate catastrophe.”

I asked: In the past and in letter-writing campaigns, what have been the specific actions XR has asked of Lincoln Center/NYCB?

They answered: “Everything from declaring a climate emergency to specifically denouncing or rejecting their most toxic backers! Some campaigns have asked for things as small as an acknowledgement that we are living in a changing climate, and have failed. It's clear that unprecedented climate disaster calls for unprecedented types of action.”

I appreciate that Extinction Rebellion engaged in a dialogue with me. But unfortunately I was left with questions unanswered and a gnawing feeling that the effort that went into this demonstration was yet another depletion of resources: the time of the protesters themselves, which could have perhaps been put to a more effective strategy, the efforts exerted by the dancers on stage and the musicians in the pit, and the willingness of bystanders to engage in what is undoubtedly an important conversation to have.

I am struck also by the assumptions—which I have seen in comments online—that this venue and occasion were the right target for a demonstration because, as some suggest, audience members were too intent on distracting themselves from the reality of the climate emergency and the current administration, or because they are inherently privileged and don’t have to face displacement or food shortages or home loss like so many people have had to face and will continue to face because of climate disaster.

I am perplexed, ultimately, by the thought pattern that gives cultural institutions that are beholden to donations in order to continue to exist some kind of imagined power, some kind of authority that would suggest, if only they were to say that they, too, trust the scientists and demand an end to the drilling and the plastic production and the senseless bombing overseas, that somehow, something would change.

I believe in protest. I do not think that protest is effective or well-intentioned when it does not have direct and actionable demands, nor when it targets individuals and institutions who ultimately have little real power to change the systemic issues that have brought us to the situation in which we find ourselves.

Lincoln Center, for what its worth, became the first arts organization in New York City to become entirely powered by renewable energy back in 2012. The campus installed solar panels, added green space, and established a waste management and recycling program. We have also seen arts organizations globally take steps to improve their environmental impact; we just saw how the Dutch National Opera has made moves to get closer to net-zero emissions, which is a great example for other institutions to emulate.

What also strikes me beyond the lack of precision in Extinction Rebellion’s demands is the statement that a protestor cried out: “Our country has become a fascist regime, and we are enjoying this beauty.”

Since November, I have documented the Trump administration’s ongoing and escalating attacks on arts and cultural institutions. Daily, I see local museums and arts groups face existential threats because they have lost their governmental funding. For my whole life, it seems, I’ve seen arts funding drain from schools. And these are factors that lead us deeper into the quagmire, into a world in which literacy is on the decline, algorithms spread misinformation and discourage originality, and growing economic instability makes pursuit of the arts—and appreciation of the arts—all the more out of reach. I myself emailed New York City Ballet today in frustration of their ticketing policy, which restricts purchase of higher-up, lower-priced seats unless enough higher-priced tickets are already sold, a policy that has made it so I cannot afford to attend performances nearly as much as I would if only they’d let me purchase tickets in the nosebleeds.

I write this newsletter—and have written it weekly for the past year—because I believe, fundamentally, that the arts are worth saving, worth promoting, and worth protecting because the arts are what make us human. Yes, there will be no dance on a dead planet. But I’m not sure that’s what matters most to those who have the power to drive actual change, and I’m not sure that nebulous demands about standing up for the planet have the intended impact when they are more likely than not expressed among an audience of likeminded individuals (research from Yale has shown that 73 percent of adults in the New York City metro area are worried about climate change, compared to the 63 percent national average).

We know that historically, 70 percent of climate emissions can be attributed to 78 corporate and state producing entities. We know there is a crisis, and we know what’s driving it. We know that targeted, urgent action is necessary. But can’t we have beauty, too? ▲