The dancing bear problem

One of many problems associated with arts aimed at the masses (and particularly the masses of minor age) is the dancing bear problem. It is not, in fact, that the bear dances so well, it's remarkable that he dances at all.

So people planning and programming for school groups, or children in general, go to elaborate pains to make sure art in performance is sufficiently banal to resemble television, or Game Boys. The Democratic Party has a similar strategy.

Once everything has been thoroughly eviscerated and the remnants embalmed, we are safe to proceed onward, secure in the knowledge that theatre , or dance, is a quaint imitation of the real arts, as embodied by Sesame Street and Nintendo. Support of them is an act of charity, because the possibility that they were actually interesting, or relevant, or different, has been tidily disposed of.

Here's an idea. Let's throw kids, whose intelligence, like that of their parents, varies, into actual art. Let's ask kids with military families what they think about Lysistrata. If we must pull them off Grand Theft Auto for a cultural excursion, let's send them to watch the Scottish play, gore and guts intact. Bring them to classical ballet (maybe not all hordes of swans, but something you would CHOOSE to see) and let them get a good look at another form of "hang time."

No. The arts organizations would fold in a month, without all those talking mice doing 45 minutes for busloads of kids at public expense. Never mind.

Of course, the possibility that adults running these things just have no sense at all IS the statistical favorite. Hence the half-dwarf production of The Doll's House, I suppose.