Moving beyond the Baumol and Bowen Cost Disease in professional ballet: A 21st century Pas de Deux (dance) of new economic assumptions and dance history perspectives

The dissertation explores the relevancy and the applicability of the Baumol and Bowen Model of the Cost Disease (1966). That model states that performing arts companies will always generate deficits for a number of explicit and implicit reasons. The hypothesis was that this was not the case. To test the hypothesis, three professional ballet companies were selected from three distinct countries as cases studies. Field research was conducted at three companies in each of the countries of Germany, Canada and the United States. Data from company documents and archives, as well as interview data, was gathered from the three companies covering ten consecutive years between 1990 through 2000 to evaluate the presence or absence of the Cost Disease. Economic comparative modeling, ethnographic, and case study methods were used to conduct the research. Each case was used to demonstrate that the Baumol and Bowen model indicting ballet companies of a natural state of deficit generation does not universally hold true. The findings of the research indicated that the German company did not exhibit the Cost Disease. The Canadian company did exhibit deficit generation during particular points along the time series. The United States exhibited the Cost Disease during three of the initial years of the time series. In all three cases, the data indicate that generation of deficits is not a foregone conclusion.