Notebook: COVID-19 and the necessity of optimism - Vancouver Ballet Society
By Michael Crabb
Performing artists tend to be optimists. How else to explain their willingness to dedicate themselves to what in the best of circumstances is often a precarious and financially insecure existence?
And then came COVID-19.
The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus has tested this optimism to the extreme. Just as governments around the world, often neglectful of early-warning signs, were ill-prepared to cope, so too were performing artists. As performance spaces were shuttered and public gatherings banned, it was as if a massive curtain had suddenly dropped to obliterate their existence.
Artists, of necessity, are also highly adaptable and by nature imaginative. It did not take long before the internet blew up with touching home videos of dancers performing solos in their living rooms. Those with dancing life partners could safely perform duets. Classes began to be offered online. Various relief funds were set up to help the neediest. Depending on the jurisdiction, government support became available.
The absence of live performance has diverted hungry arts patrons to seek comfort from their screens. Companies with existing high-quality recorded repertoire (and union agreements that permit its rebroadcast), have had an advantage here. This has usually meant large, well-funded ballet companies who have compelling motives to maintain brand awareness and patron engagement, even at a cost. Commercial streaming services with a respectable performing arts catalogue have actually benefited.
With more time on their hands during lockdowns, one could speculate that new virtual audiences may have been drawn to dance. Some aficionados might decide that watching dance digitally is a safer and less expensive alternative to the real thing, which of course it is not.
Dance specifically created for the screen is one thing. Transposing to film or video what was designed for the live stage is a compromised substitute or, at best, a very different experience. The full impact of a dance performance can only be felt in real time with artists and audience breathing the same air.
What draws people to live performing arts events is more than purely aesthetic. It is a social act in which patrons gather at close quarters with like-minded others. In ideal circumstances an energy loop is created in which an audience’s excitement feeds the artists’ urge to excel. It is a magical experience, but achieving it requires a level of social interaction that is the antithesis of everything we’ve been told will help prevent the spread of a lethal virus.
Even so, dancers and dance companies are eager to get back on stage. Dancers’ careers are short, to say nothing of the financial hardship.
Except for those — mostly in Europe — with generous and reliable public funding, companies depend on box office revenue and private donations to survive. What if North American ballet companies lose this year’s Nutcracker season? For many, the annual family favourite is a make-or-break ballet and depends on high-capacity attendance. Without it, some regional companies could go out of business.
As for high-end donors, the calls on their generosity have increased from all quarters during the pandemic, just as the stock portfolios that sustain their largesse are enduring a roller-coaster ride.
The timing and nature of the resumption of live performance will vary globally. Some companies have already recalled dancers to the studio, albeit with stringent safety protocols. Others blithely predict being back on stage by mid-fall and are happy to accept subscriptions on that assumption. Ironically, the apparent success of the lockdowns and their gradual easing has led to the erroneous conclusion that somehow the danger has passed. It has not. Globally, the pandemic is worsening: The virus is easily spread and can still kill; and not just old folk, the poor and socially or racially marginalized communities.
The arrival of an effective, widely available and safe vaccine is many months if not years away and its necessary uptake across populations may be undermined by the mendacious but rapidly growing anti-vaxxer movement.
A variety of surveys have indicated an encouraging eagerness among patrons to return to the theatre, but with qualifications. Some would return immediately given the chance. Others are willing to wait a bit, even until the arrival of a vaccine or powerful anti-viral treatment.
Everyone wants to feel safe, but what does safe look like? For performing arts organizations, it’s a bit of a Catch 22. They could opt to focus on virtual delivery but whether that would be sustainable financially is questionable. Patrons can’t be expected to pay as much for a streamed performance as they would for a live show. Unless they want to abandon live performance altogether, dance companies and their presenters will have to adjust for the foreseeable future to a new normal that safeguards the health of staff, artists and audiences and protects their organizations against potential lawsuits for negligence. It’s not a pretty prospect.
Imagine a performance in a familiar venue where previously you would have greeted friends on arrival, chatted at intermission, and perhaps enjoyed a drink (crucial revenue for the venue). Now you will be required to arrive in your mask at a pre-specified time to minimize social clumping. After having your temperature checked and hands sanitized you are directed to a socially distanced seat — contiguous seats if you are with household members. At this point you look around and realize that the hall is at best half full, hardly a socially congenial environment (or one to warm the hearts of company managers). Once seated, depending on prevailing health authority directives, you may be allowed to remove your mask. There will be no intermission and washroom access may be limited. Under no circumstances sneeze or cough or else you may spur a stampede. After the performance you will not, as has been hitherto customary, herd toward the exits while trading opinions, but put your masks back on and wait until directed to leave. Welcome to the “new normal.”
Let’s be optimistic, like the artists. Let’s hope a vaccine arrives soon and brings this latest coronavirus under control to the point that people regard it as no more threatening than a seasonal flu. We’ll be back to the way things were in next to no time, right?
Wrong. The financial fallout from the pandemic is of a gravity that defies easy solution. Governments that have basically printed money to provide immediate financial relief will probably try to inflate themselves out of debt by paying back devalued money. Higher taxes — except of course for the mega-rich — will be inevitable. Taxation incentives for charitable giving will likely be tightened; bad news for arts organizations. Government belt-tightening means pleas for help from the arts sector, always bottom of the ladder, will go largely unheeded.
We are going to need all the optimism we can muster.
