When I think of the $80 ticket price (the cheapest seats) for the Ana Laguna and Baryshinkov performances at the Harris Theater in Chicago this weekend, I cringe. When I can only spend $80 a week on groceries how can I justify spending $80 dollars for a single show. It is ridiculous, and it is precisely why I and many other dancers and non-dancers who would die to see this show will miss out.

Compare this to the ten nights of dance performances at City Center, in NYC this week, during it’s annual Fall for Dance Series. All tickets are $10 and, even with the sometimes questionable programming, the dancers will inspire.  Every seat will be filled, an experience rarely found at any dance performance today. In most cases young adults choose to see a movie or go to a museum for an artistic outing, for the $10-$20 sticker price. But, the Fall for Dance series is a instance where those young adults who can’t afford the $80-$150 tickets can afford to see one or ten live performances of dance. These types of performances not only bring young crowds together and inspire but they also help rebuild a community of dance that has dissipated in the last years because it is so disconnected to it’s contemporary audience.

If New York can do this with its dance community, why can’t every major city in the United States?

Chicago has started to offer more free dance concerts, mainly in the summer, with the Chicago Dancing Festival and outdoor performances by companies such as the Joffery ballet.  Where is Chicago’s Fall for Dance or San Francisco’s, LA’s, Seattle’s, Houston’s, Miami’s and Washington DC’s?  All these cities have enough large corporations to underwrite such performances. So why do they not exist yet?

I hope that soon the dance communities and supporters in each of these cities, and many other cities not mentioned, will wake up and realize dance needs to rebuild its network and that programs like Fall for Dance are a great way to do this. Even if only those who can’t afford the $80 and up ticket price could find comfort in the fact that once, twice, or ten times a year there are live dance performances for the price of a movie.

Twyla Tharp has devised a new  musical ” Come Fly with Me” set to the music of Frank Sinatra previewing at the AllianceTheater in Atlanta, Ga.

She has an all star dance cast from Ashley Tuttle (ABT), Holley Farmer( Merce Cunningham) and John Selya(Eddie in Movin’ Out). I hope she finds her footing on this one after the entertaining but mediocre “Movin’ Out”, set to Billy Joel music, and the embarrassing flop of the awful “The Times They Are a-Changin”, set to Bob Dylan Songs.

Maybe she’ll regain the flair and spirit of genius that we’ve seen in works such as “Duece Coup” and “In the Upper Room” in “Come Fly with Me”, but somehow I get an awful feeling that makes my toes cramp that this is no better than Poor Bob.

I pray that Twyla hasn’t turned into the dance version of Elton John with another cheesy poof musical, but maybe it’s already too late.

Read more about “Come Fly with Me.” in Gia Kourlas nytimes article A Night Club. Sinatra Singing. Couples in Love.