Ballet Des Moines Executive Director Blaire Massa (right), Artistic Director Serkan Usta (center) and Winefest Des Moines Executive Director Natasha Sayles (left).
So this is where we are now. In the doorway and on the floor, holding court virtually and holding technology literally in order to give company dancers a portal to an audience.
While it is within my job description to create images for the ballet, I’m not sure I’ve taken a more accidentally powerful one. There are no stages. No bright lights. No lush velvet curtain with company logos surging by spotlight onto it before the opening act of a Triple Bill. Instead, there are lines delivered like “Can you hear me now?” and “I’m sorry, can everyone go ahead and mute themselves?” and the occasional “We’re having technical difficulties so we’re going to switch from our laptop to the iPad so stay with us!”
Ballet Des Moines had their first “performance” during this month’s collaboration with Winefest. Ticket holders purchased a three course dinner, which came with two bottles of wine, dessert and a Zoom link sent 24 hours before the show. Ten ticket holders were able to sit in studio, up in the costume loft, so far above the dancers they met the six foot minimum to socially distance in a state that still doesn’t require masks to ensure the safety of each other, our children, parents and grandparents, let alone our six company dancers desperately trying to stay healthy in a global pandemic, but this is not meant to be a political post. (But for the record, it sure would have been nice to see my grandfather one last time before he had to be quarantined in a hospital due to covid and would die there, alone, due to covid complications. Wear the damn mask.)
I digress.
The performance, which was actually meant to be a peek behind-the-scenes at a work in progress and regularly scheduled evening rehearsal, went exactly as it should. Dancers were dewey from the warm air and adrenaline of having a 10 person real life audience and 30 person virtual audience. They were graceful and strong and all of the things that first captured me about the art of ballet. And for a moment, I wasn’t sad about the the loss of a stage, because the dancers were dancing again and able to share it with others. That feeling of awe watching them fly through the air? Still there. That energetic inertia that makes you physically sway in the same direction the dancers are moving? Still happened. And on the faces of the Executive Director, Artistic Director and Creative Director (behind the camera lens) were wide eyes and smiles that can only be produced by pure authentic joy.
Stage or no stage, we showed up in masks, allowing our belief in the power of the arts to be undiminished. The frustration and angst over how things have unfolded this year was suspended. And in a time when almost nothing feels right, this night and this moment, these dancers and this audience, felt exactly right.
So this is where we are now. Loving the arts from doorways and computer screens, foregoing velvety curtains for semi-reliable internet and virtual connections. But we have our health, a company of professional dancers and a studio to rehearse in and share from. And we’ve got each other.
Until it is safe for the stage to welcome us all home, please support the arts.