On April 8, several organizations came together for a “Chicago Performing Arts Virtual Retreat.” Representatives from See Chicago Dance, Chicago Dancemakers Forum, the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, Links Hall, High Concept Labs, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Pivot Arts, the Arts and Business Council of Chicago, and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) led breakout sessions, conducted physical exercises, and fielded questions from nearly 200 participants over the three-and-a-half hours of the event.In the two weeks since, Reader theater and dance editor Kerry Reid and dance writer Irene Hsiao, who both sat in on the town hall, have been occasionally sharing their thoughts with each other about what live performance means and how it survives in the context of the COVID-19 shutdown, along with ongoing examples of online performance they’ve been watching in quarantine. This is an edited version of that written dialogue.
Uncertainty also drives questions many have about the sustainability of art forms based on gathering—a small way of asking if we as a social species can survive, perhaps. Uncertainty drives my writing—it feels important to witness the spectrum of responses in this time without rushing to judgment. We can’t know whether anything is working, yet we know that people are working.
So now the question for me as an editor is—what’s a fair way to cover online content? I’ve certainly written up some online productions since the shutdown, but my uncertainty comes from not being sure if that is even useful right now, at least from the standpoint of being a review. It’s either archival stuff or newly created work that feels like a rough draft of history, or what a colleague calls “an amuse-bouche”—a little tidbit to tide us over until we can gather again.
Brian Balcom, the director for Teenage Dick at Theater Wit, made a good point in the talkback for that show the first night it went on a ticketed livestream: for a lot of people with disabilities or who live far away from cultural centers, these digital options are sometimes the only way they can consistently see theater. And that would also be true for dance, I assume.I wonder if in your discussions with dance artists, is there a sense that these new digital platforms might remain even after a vaccine—whenever that blessed day arrives?
Often they already have a practice of sharing their work online—choreographer Yin Yue noted in her interview that it was the only way for small companies to stay afloat because the process of creating a new production can take so long. It has also given dancers a chance to try new techniques or take classes with teachers they may not have had access to—such as the Gaga classes offered by teachers in New York and Tel Aviv, which occur eight times a day and draw hundreds to class. These numbers reflect a demand built by Ohad Naharin’s choreography as well as the limited access most people have to such classes. (Chicago, for instance, lost its only certified Gaga teacher in December.) I could see such classes continuing beyond the present where previously unrealized demand exists. Yet I wonder what we can really learn from a screen—there’s a meme on the BalletMoods Instagram account that points out what we all know.
I don’t feel any more able than anyone else to forecast what will happen for dance or theater. To me, performance is about what is happening right now.
