Joanna's contrast between private and public school dancers, reminds me of a long series of thoughts I once had on the decline of the arts and the US elite's interst in promoting them or participating in them, particularly the visual arts...
Quick summary... What I think is that the traditional arts and their vitality is tied to the working class, not the elites. If you go back and figure out who was doing the arts, these were mostly lower class people who were trying to `make it' through the arts. They supplied the skill, the craft, the `vision', but it was the elite patrons who supplied the money, the social support and interest, the cultural engagement---because of their access to wealth and power.
So, the issue is that the self-centered and entitlement sensibility of the current elite is anti-thetical to development and vitality in the arts. The arts, even writers and painters who are solo occupations, are highly social and need the social dialectic to exist and thrive.
I also think the decline of the US elites started long ago, as the pre-WWII elite got old and died off. Even by the early 70s you could see a down turn that got steadly worse, took a real drop with the Reagan era...
I think the whole Neoliberal system, was morbund on delivery, if seen through the view of the arts.
CG