Recession? What recession?

What else is one to ask upon hearing that there is yet another attempt brewing to concoct a professional ballet company for Indianapolis. More than a reminder that, for some people, money is never an issue, this latest news also underscores the fact that, in Indianapolis, these same people will not be denied their ballet.

I mean here we are in the midst of a citywide arts-funding meltdown with budgets being cut and people losing their jobs. That’s not keeping Jane Fortune and Robert Hesse from coming forward with plans for the Indianapolis City Ballet, a professional company they plan on launching in September.

For some, this will be greeted as great news. These are the folks who believe in their bones that no city worth its name can exist without the presence of certain cultural institutions: a symphony orchestra, a museum of art, an opera company a professional theater -- and a ballet company. That this notion may be as old-fashioned as wearing a suit and tie to an evening performance doesn’t faze these die-hards in the least. As far as these ballet-o-manes are concerned, having a ballet company here amounts to a civic duty.

These people were alternately heart-broken and exasperated when Ballet Internationale finally wore out its welcome (and their almost inexhaustible checkbooks). Run by a Soviet-era exile who never bothered to learn the nuances of American-style fund-raising, who insisted on living like a Lilly executive and who, in the bargain, barely concealed his contempt for the community (beginning with his insisting on a company name-change designed to distance the company from its Indianapolis identity), BI’s million dollar deficit was less an issue than its artistic director’s profligate arrogance.

Indeed, it’s hard to imagine another arts organization being forgiven as many financial and administrative transgressions as BI was in its brief history. In a city where artists are constantly reminded that they need to be more businesslike, BI’s treatment verged on the mystical, if not the downright naïve.

The fixed idea that Indianapolis requires its own ballet company reveals an abiding vein of cultural conservatism here. When it comes to the arts, this is, deep down, your grandfather’s kind of town.

But then again, what of it? If this is what a certain class of people here want to spend their money on, bless their hearts. What’s more, our current economic woes might even provide an aesthetic silver lining, making the mind-numbing and budget-busting resurrection of 19th century warhorses unaffordable – and encouraging a sleeker, more contemporary approach to choreography and production values. Mr. Hesse, it must be noted, was executive director of the Joffrey Ballet in the 1980s. The Joffrey has been a leader in efforts to reinvent ballet’s traditional vocabulary.

A press conference about Indianapolis City Ballet is scheduled for tax day, April 15. Stay tuned…