Ballet has influence in a lot of places when you start looking for it. The steps and theory and all that form the basis for a wide variety of dance and choreography. That's not what you were talking about though, so it's kind of a dirty trick of me to bring it up. It felt relevant to the conversation, but I'm honestly just being scatterbrained.

It's only niche in its "purest" form, but if one starts to look for it ballet can be observed in a lot of places, where a great deal of people enjoy it. I know that's a bit of a copout, but I think it's necessary to point out. I generally mean the principles and teachings having wide-ranging influence - Basically most physical theatre and acting has its foundation in ballet, but there's also just stuff like actual ballet occurring and people enjoying it - For example Mads Mikkelsens dance in Another Round^[This became wayy too ADHD punctuated. Forgive me.]

That it's niche is no reason to look down on it, half the users on hexbear are members of some musical scene that has an audience of 7 people and a deaf dog.
It's a rich people thing because tickets are expensive. Storytelling through dance is pretty popular, when it's presented in the right framework. Theatre is generally a rich people / old people thing, but that doesn't make it inherently bad. It's just a result of the world we live in sadly. Shakesspeare was for the proles originally.

The only thing I agree that sucks about ballet is the insane culture the dancers are subjected to. But if I let that have any significance I couldn't enjoy any weinstein movie, like you alluded to. That shit really sucks though. Fucking hate it. Wish it stopped. There really needs to be a fundamental reshaping of the cultural institutions in the west - if not the world.