POV: Ballet and opera institutions need to get radical to stay relevant

A few years ago I got a call from my cousin in Paris asking if I could get tickets to a contemporary opera production in Brussels. The request wasn’t for him, it was for someone else. “Keep it quiet,” he said. “It’s Thomas Bangalter from Daft Punk.”

Thomas brought his son along. We watched the show, then went for dinner with friends afterwards. It was a fantastic evening of music, curiosity and openness – exactly what opera can be when you approach it without preconceptions.

That memory sprung to mind when Timothée Chalamet recently dismissed opera and ballet as outdated art forms disconnected from modern culture. I completely disagree.

If anything, opera and ballet are deeply embedded in contemporary culture. Beyoncé’s visual work has borrowed heavily from ballet choreography and staging. Fashion designers regularly reference opera’s theatricality and ballet’s silhouettes. And ballerina Misty Copeland’s performance alongside Miles Caton, Raphael Saadiq and Shaboozey at the 2026 Oscars was testament to the undeniable intertwining of the classical and the contemporary.

The challenge isn’t the art forms themselves, but how the institutions around them present themselves.

The real barrier is perception

In my experience working with cultural institutions, the biggest challenge opera houses and ballet companies face is perception. Many people think “it’s not for me”. They imagine it’s elitist, expensive or intimidating. They worry about what to wear, or that they won’t know when to clap. Or they assume it belongs to another era. Yet, when you actually take someone to the opera for the first time, the reaction is almost always the same: “Wow”.

The scale, the beauty, and the craftsmanship are overwhelming in the best way. The barrier was never the experience itself. It was ignorance about what that experience might be.

That distinction is important. Opera and ballet should absolutely remain exceptional – these are art forms that demand incredible levels of skill, discipline and creativity. Exceptional is good, inaccessible is not. Many institutions still confuse the two.

Look outside the sector

One of the biggest mistakes cultural institutions make is thinking their competitors are other theatres. Their real competitors are Netflix, Spotify, Instagram – the entire attention economy. People today are choosing how to spend an evening, not simply which cultural venue to attend.

If opera houses want to compete in that environment, they need to look outside their own sector for inspiration. Fashion brands, sportswear companies and entertainment platforms have become masters at building immersive brand worlds. They don’t simply sell a product, they create a universe people want to participate in.

Opera houses and ballet companies already have something much richer than most brands – centuries of history, incredible craftsmanship and powerful storytelling. They rarely activate that cultural capital in ways that feel contemporary.

The answer is definitely not gimmicks. One opera house tried to reach younger audiences by organising a massive techno party in the main hall. It was packed and everyone had fun, but none of those people came back to see an opera. They went to a party in a cool building — not to discover opera. If you want people to engage with the art form, you have to bring them into its world.

Building a cultural world

This is where world-building comes in. For cultural institutions, a brand world means extending the experience far beyond the stage. It begins long before someone enters the auditorium. Social media shouldn’t just advertise performances; it should reveal the daily life of the institution to humanise the art form and make it relatable. For inspiration, look to Spanish theatre company La Fura dels Baus, which once documented the transportation of its stage set – a 25-metre-tall giant woman – in real time on social media. It became an event in itself even before the show, and served as a fantastic teaser for audiences.

The National Ballet of Canada has recently rethought how it presents itself to audiences, working with Bruce Mau Design. Instead of positioning itself as a distant institution, the new identity frames the company as a collective storyteller, using language that actively invites audiences in.

Ambassadors also create effective entry points for newbies. People trust voices they recognise. In Antwerp, I saw a cultural institution invite well-known local icons such as fashion star Ann Demeulemeester or Tom Barman, the lead singer of rock band dEUS, to curate their own selections from the season programme – effectively saying, “If you like this person’s taste, start here.”

When we worked with La Monnaie opera house in Brussels, we explored this exact question: How to welcome people for their “first-time” at the opera? First-time visitors often arrive with anxiety, so we proposed a dedicated “First-time visitor?” booth at the entrance – where people could be welcomed, ask questions and get a short tour of the building before the performance.

Beyond discount coupons, newsletters, or social media, what truly matters is the human welcome people receive. When first-time visitors are warmly guided through their experience at the opera, the impression can be lasting – often turning them into enthusiastic ambassadors who bring along friends and family.

Branding as a living system

To make this work, institutions also need to rethink what branding actually means. A new logo alone will never bring people to the opera. What can truly change their minds is a shift in the overall perception of the institution.

Real contemporary branding must be dynamic and open: a flexible framework that allows an institution to evolve with culture while maintaining a coherent identity.

The time when graphic consistency alone formed the backbone of communication is over. What matters today is the ability to spark emotions across the entire experience – from social media to newsletters, from ticketing to the website, from catering to printed programmes. At every step, the key question is how the audience feels: guided, welcomed, valued, cared for, or pleasantly surprised.

Opera houses and ballet companies should see themselves as active participants in contemporary culture – and act accordingly. These institutions already contain extraordinary creative worlds. The challenge is building a brand system capable of expressing that richness across every touchpoint.

At La Monnaie Opera, the identity we developed together was not built on strict graphic consistency, but on the principle of surprise. For 20 years, each new season became an opportunity to collaborate with artists and create unexpected campaigns designed to spark curiosity, experimentation, engagement, or even debate. One example: in 2022, it became the first opera house in the world to launch a campaign created entirely with AI.

Opera and ballet aren’t dying, they are evolving

Opera and ballet directors are experimenting with immersive staging, digital scenography and AI-assisted design. Technology is opening up entirely new possibilities for storytelling on stage. At the same time, leading figures from adjacent fields – such as contemporary art, design, and cinema – are increasingly invited to collaborate, helping to build bridges between audiences and dissolve traditional cultural boundaries.

Opera and ballet are no longer isolated worlds, as they once were. They exist within the broader cultural landscape we all inhabit. The question now is how institutions communicate it. If they want new audiences to walk through their doors, they need to think more radically about how they present themselves not just as venues, but as cultural worlds.