"[A]ny variance in skin tone is obscured by lighting and makeup that have the effect of creating a stultifying homogeneity, which is the point and amounts, ultimately, to an eerie celebration of whiteness."

From "The Rockettes and Race: A Very White Christmas" by Ginia Bellafante (NYT).

Key fact: 10% of the Rockettes are black.

Also, on the day when Bellafante saw the show — which is called "Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes" — "The crowd was overwhelmingly white."

ADDED: I thought the whole point of that Rockettes kind of dancing is that they move as if they are all one. E pluribus unum, one might say. That's the style, so why go to the show at all if you feel "stultified" by "homogeneity"?

AND: I've never gone to see the Rockettes (despite living in NYC for 10+ years). I'm just not interested in that kind of dancing, and all my life I've heard elite opinion disparaging them. But they're still around, and some people are going to the show. If I did attend the show because I wanted to write about it, I would be aware of my own difference from Rockettes enthusiasts, and I'd try to understand why the people who love it love it. I wouldn't present my emotional response as objective, and I hope I wouldn't distance myself from the crowd. There's something especially bad about putting yourself above other people — thinking you're the one with the good taste — and then racializing the difference.