Ticket sales at the Kennedy Center have continued to plummet following Donald Trump’s takeover of Washington DC’s premier performing arts venue, with the prestigious Stuttgart Ballet expected to dance next month to houses less than 20% full.
Audiences are “voting with their feet to skip out” on shows that would once have been packed, in protest at the US president inserting himself into the center’s management and operations as its new chairman, amid discussions around the notion of renaming it after Trump, according to an analysis by the Washingtonian magazine.
The outlet said the Stuttgart Ballet’s series at the Kennedy complex’s Opera House in October is only “between 4 and 19%” full based on reservations so far, and BodyTraffic, a Los Angeles troupe booked for two performances in the smaller Eisenhower Theatre at the end of the month, is only booked so far at 12% capacity.
“Big yikes,” one current Kennedy Center staffer told the outlet, having been granted anonymity to speak for fear of retaliation by its new leadership team of Trump-installed loyalists and acolytes.
Richard Grenell, Trump’s longtime foreign policy adviser who was appointed to lead the Kennedy Center in February after a clear-out of trustees, last week fired its dance programming team and hired in its place a former company member of the Washington Ballet who calls himself a “Maga former dancer”, referring to the Republican leadership slogan Make America Great Again (Maga).
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Stephen Nakagawa, the Daily Beast reported, is a critic of what he calls “radical leftist ideologies” in ballet, and is a good fit for Trump’s efforts “to reshape the center into a ‘non-woke’ entertainment destination”.
The Washingtonian report paints a damning portrait of the health of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in the months since its takeover by Trump, who last month announced he had decided “reluctantly” to personally host its annual arts awards signature show in December.
Subscription revenue is down by about 50%, the magazine’s report said, and it quoted a spokesperson for the German embassy who said they did not know if the Stuttgart Ballet would still perform there given the poor ticket sales.
The reported slump extends an already worrying slide in patronage. By June, the Kennedy Center had seen subscription sales fall by about $1.6m, or roughly 36%, compared with 2024.
At least 10 cast members from the North American touring production of Les Misérables chose to boycott an 11 June performance there in protest at Trump being in the audience.
The Kennedy Center did not immediately return a request for comment on Friday.
