Daily Inspiration Quote by John Guare

A little pang of praise, a little dagger of side-eye: Guare’s line flatters the New York City Ballet while quietly diagnosing what’s happened to Broadway. “Great numbers” is classic showbiz language - brassy, crowd-pleasing set pieces built to stop the show. By saying those numbers now live at City Ballet, he’s not merely complimenting the dancers’ virtuosity; he’s suggesting that the musical theater tradition of big, legible spectacle has migrated to an institution supposedly devoted to “high art.”

The subtext is a cultural reshuffle. Broadway, once the natural home for mass-audience dance extravagance, has become more constrained - financially risk-averse, narratively dominated by brand-name IP, and often less willing to bankroll choreography as a central attraction. Ballet, in Guare’s framing, has absorbed some of the show’s old civic job: delivering communal awe through bodies moving in synchrony, engineered for maximum impact.

There’s also an insider’s wink about taste and class. Calling a ballet sequence a “Broadway show number” collapses the hierarchy between “serious” dance and commercial entertainment. It’s a compliment that refuses to behave: it praises City Ballet by comparing it to the supposedly lower-brow arena of Broadway, implying that the ballet company’s appeal is partially its ability to perform virtuosity as accessible, theatrical pleasure.

Context matters because Guare comes out of a New York that treats stages like a shared ecosystem. He’s mapping the city’s shifting cultural energy: when one institution stops taking artistic risks, another quietly picks up the abandoned thrill.