Retirement, Italian style: Carla Fracci: "another assault on the world of ballet.".

Last fall, for the first time in its history, the Italian ballet community found itself in agreement. The reason for this unity was to protest publicly a law that proposes to up the retirement ages of all performers in all categories working in state-subsidized companies. If the legislation, now before the Italian parliament, passes, dancers will be required to work until 65 (for men) and 60 (for women) if they wish to receive their full pensions. (The current retirement ages are 52 for men and 45 for women.) This could be a double-edged sword for the tenured dancers (approximately 300 of them) in the seven Italian opera house companies. (Dancers in independent troupes, in which contracts are renewed annually, would not be affected.)

With permanent jobs and lenient rules (ballet class is mandatory only three days a week), opera house dancers have been shielded from the hard realities, often to the detriment of artistic quality. Indeed, the dancers have often been tolerated, rather than loved, by opera house directors, whose priorities lie in opera production. Without an incentive to rise to international standards, the dancing has often fallen into lazy routine. Dancers have been promoted because of seniority or union pressure, rather than the quality of their work. Thanks to a contract that guarantees employment until retirement, ballet companies are aging, and younger artists are finding it hard to get in. La Scala Ballet, for example, no longer can offer one-year corps contracts to its school's best graduates. Until 1999, when the Ministry of Italian Performing Arts (Ministero dello Spettacolo Italiano) was completely financing the opera houses, anything went.

But in the past six years, since the houses were ordered to convert into semi-private foundations and to operate with a profit, the ballet ensembles have found themselves in the eye of a storm. They have been branded as both expensive and unproductive. One solution--to fire all the dancers--has been proposed by opera house administrators. They say the situation is hopeless. As ballet star Carla Fracci, the 69-year-old director of the Rome Opera Ballet, declared: "The refusal to grant dancers an exemption is another assault on the world of ballet and the arts in general."

To show the incongruity of the new law, Italian dancers cite the policy at the Paris Opera Ballet, which permits full retirement with benefits at 42. Elsewhere in France, dancers receive their state pensions at 60; in Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, the age is 65. But in these countries, dancers who retire around 40 can still pursue a second career, with their retraining subsidized through artist pension, or special insurance funds, like British Dancers Career Development or the Association suisse pour la reconversion des danseurs professionels.

This should be the real target of our fight, says a former Florence-based dancer in his 40s. "The opera houses should be compelled to help us in career transition. We are employees whom the houses could use in other jobs. The truth is this is a casus belli that gives boards the opportunity to close their dance companies."

This opinion is not so far from the truth; witness former La Scala Intendant Carlo Fontana's recent words: "The expenses of running a dance company are increasing more than income. Opera houses need to revise their agreements with artists and eliminate open-ended contracts."

Translation: Allan Ulrich