Daily Inspiration Quote by John Guare

Calling a ballet company New York's "moral center" is a deliciously perverse proposition, and John Guare knows it. The city that markets itself through money, hustle, and notoriety is suddenly redeemed not by a mayor, a church, or a protest line, but by an art form often coded as elite, rarefied, even escapist. The intent is partly affectionate provocation: Guare elevates the New York City Ballet to the status of civic conscience precisely because it seems like the least plausible institution to carry that burden.

The subtext is theater-maker savvy. For a playwright steeped in the city's manic energy, "moral center" doesn't mean piety; it means a place where discipline, risk, and collective purpose still hold. Ballet is relentless craft made public: bodies submitting to rules to produce something fleeting, exacting, and beyond utility. In a metropolis where value is constantly monetized and attention is constantly auctioned, that kind of rigor reads as ethical. It's a rebuke to cynicism delivered with a wink.

Context matters: NYCB isn't just "ballet" in the abstract. It's Balanchine's speed, modernism, and New York-ness - athletic, unsentimental, built for a city that prides itself on forward motion. Guare's line also nods to the paradox of New York culture: its highest ideals often live inside institutions with complicated access, funding, and prestige. By calling the Ballet the moral center, he isn't ignoring that tension; he's using it, suggesting that the city's conscience survives where pleasure and discipline meet, not where virtue is loudly performed.