How Would Dancers Survive 2020?

I miss watching dance in a theatre. My heart aches for all dancers across the different genres of ballet, contemporary and whatever else. The performing arts is badly hit by the fallout from COVID-19 lockdowns. It will be a long time more before people are comfortable returning to packed theatres to sit among thousands to watch a concert/performance, and months before performers return to share breathing space with fellow colleagues.

Dancers have very short careers. They train for ten years to realize a dream of dancing for the next fifteen years. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that dancers are languishing this year, and they'd require a truckload of mental fortitude to get through 2020. Like everyone else, life these few months isn't just about following lockdown rules or their own moral code. For athletes, the physical body is paramount; it's also about managing the fear of getting infected with COVID-19 and surviving its accompanying symptoms.

The American Ballet Theatre (ABT) has taken classes and practice online. Their stories are highlighted by Marina Harss in The New Yorker published on May 21, 2020, titled 'Dancing on Their Own During The Coronavirus Crisis'.

ABT celebrates its eightieth anniversary this year, but with the entire season canceled, it stands to lose eighteen million dollars in revenue from ticket sales and touring fees. They have started fundraising, and relief funds for the dancers help tide over this immediate period. "The dancers’ salaries are only guaranteed through early July, when their New York City season would normally end. A fall season has been announced, but it remains anything but certain." 

The dancers of American Ballet Theatre have gathered for their daily virtual ballet class, as many of them have done since March 14th, the day after the company, based near Union Square in Manhattan, sent everyone home. As news of the coronavirus pandemic grew ever more terrifying, some stayed in New York, but others, afraid of being stuck in small apartments with little room to move, left to be with their families elsewhere. Often they were returning to homes they had left at fourteen or fifteen, never imagining they would one day spend weeks, months, or God knows how long sleeping in childhood bedrooms and practicing their jumps in perilous proximity to kitchen islands. About thirty of the company’s ninety dancers join the class on any given day.

Dancers typically dance five to seven hours a day. They don't need any other exercise besides pilates or gyrotonic to ease out knots and strains. They stay in shape by dancing. Now, they can't. Well, they now work on form and precision. They could do strength training and exercise enough to keep in shape, but it wouldn't be in peak physical condition. They don't have the full expanse of a studio to practice grand allegro or grand jeté.

While ABT has organized virtual classes and training, and rallied for corporate support in terms of funds and sponsorship for its dancers, it's still in limbo. Without 'work' and an audience or tours across the country, ABT is stuck in a pothole when it comes to balancing the books. It hasn't been able to catch up with New York City Ballet (NYCB), in terms of its digital strategy in broadcasting their ballets online weekly. NYCB calls it the 'Digital Spring Season'. This digital outreach is great for audiences, but not ideal for company financials or the dancers. It's a stop-gap measure; a score for marketing and public relations perhaps. But that's all. It's impossible to secure that much funds without live performances.

There’s little public funding for the arts, and the category of live performance faces some of the highest barriers to a return to activity. Before a vaccine or a cure for the coronavirus, people may be willing to get a haircut or buy a car (if they can afford it), but will they be ready to sit in an enclosed, windowless theatre for two hours among hundreds or thousands of fellow audience members? Will opera singers be able to rehearse, propelling their breath across large spaces into the breathing space of other singers? Will orchestra musicians be able to sit shoulder to shoulder? Will dancers be able to share a studio for hours and hours, as they normally do, or hurl themselves into their partners’ arms at the end of a pas de deux? How long will it be until such things make any sense at all? And what does it mean to be a singer or a dancer or a cellist if you can’t perform? The question is as much a metaphysical one as a practical one. As Alexei Ratmansky, A.B.T.’s resident choreographer, told me, several weeks into the lockdown, “If we can’t go into the studio, what are we?” Ratmansky has gone from a managing a manic schedule and crisscrossing the globe to make ballets to weeks of enforced inactivity.