Nevada Ballet Theatre performance of Swan Lake. Photo by Virginia Trudeau

Grace Under Pressure

EN POINTE DURING THE PANDEMIC

BY KENDALL HARDIN

Like so many cultural groups across the country, Nevada Ballet Theatre saw its new season upended and suspended overnight by an invisible, lethal virus.

NBT’s scenario presents a parallel universe to the unprecedented challenges facing many Las Vegas professional sports leagues as well. How does a dance company keep its highly trained elite athletes in prime shape – let alone healthy – with barriers to physical interaction in the rehearsal studio? How can the company maintain the chemistry of ensemble works without performing on stage before a live audience? And how far will the company be forced to push back its season, with the uncertain specter of COVID still looming?

Perhaps most important is determining how the company can stay afloat financially without ticket sales, engaged donors, and live audiences to back a company that has established itself for nearly five decades as the Silver State’s premiere professional company and a bona fide player on the national dancescape?

Nevada Ballet Theatre has built a national reputation with its three core programs – the Dance Academy, the Professional Performing Company (including the Choreographers Showcase in exclusive partnership with Cirque du Soleil), and NBT’s Educational Outreach Program in collaboration with local schools and The Smith Center, including the popular Future Dance program.

Pre-pandemic, the Academy provided training for 450 students ranging in age from 18 months to adult level served by two dozen teachers. As one of two founding resident companies at The Smith Center along with the Las Vegas Philharmonic, NBT staged a total of 37 mainstage performances and educational matinees that reached over 47,000 audience members in its last full season.

The Nutcracker alone provided 13 performances over two weeks – in addition to two performances expressly for 2,514 Clark County students. More than a family holiday tradition, the Nutcracker is the company’s cash cow, accounting for 65% of ticket sales income to NBT’s bottom line. The company is now facing $2.6 million in lost revenue during this current season.

When COVID-19 shut down NBT’s hub in Summerlin, the company was forced to pivot to digital cyberspace overnight. Without a traditional performance schedule, it launched two initiatives under its umbrella campaign “Dance on with NBT” to engage with audiences at home or on digital devices: its new NBT@Home platform and bi-weekly Focal Pointe newsletter. It pirouetted to behind-the-scenes features, news flashes, archival highlights, and an interactive blog with featured artists.

Management staff zoomed-in from home once NBT’s 36,000 square foot facility was officially closed to the public, and NBT’s corps de ballet of dancers and apprentices continued to work out from their living rooms and kitchens via virtual classes.

Maintaining peak performance is critical to all professional athletes but receiving real-time feedback at the barre in the studio is an indispensable part of ballet discipline. One can diagram or describe movements, but dancers – like pro football, basketball, and hockey players – must physically execute the movements and staging through supervised rehearsal until muscle memory takes over. Couples must fine-tune dangerous lifts and throws, just as the entire troupe works to achieve effortless ensemble perfection in tune with both music and choreography.

So how does NBT stay on its toes during this deadly downturn? In addition to the Dance On campaign, the marketing team is hard at work creating a novel membership initiative. Launching this fall with a virtual subscription, the program will connect company and community with an array of creative content, providing rare behind-the-scenes access and personal interactions with exclusive offerings tailored to a variety of ages and tastes. Patrons young and old can enjoy “insider experiences” about the company while next year’s performances wait in the wings.

Nevada Ballet Theatre performance of Bolero. Photo by Virginia Trudeau

With the arrival of COVID-19 this spring, dance companies have been forced to create “transformational opportunities” and “reimagined models” that reach far beyond traditional venues and local markets. In just a matter of months, innovation has been popping up all over the planet.

• The American Ballet Theatre kicked off an eight-week online season this year with a piece specially commissioned for the internet.
• The Paris Opera Ballet hired French film director Cedric Klapisch to edit a video tribute to French healthcare workers with 61 dancers performing in-home surroundings to Prokofiev’s score of Romeo and Juliet.
• The New York City Ballet created its own YouTube channel of nightly programs from the company’s extensive archives – adding insightful interviews and commentary from company dancers, choreographers, and creative staff.

Leading-edge technology appears to offer an alluring pas de deux beyond traditional venues. Indeed, the ballet world has just begun to flirt with new “immersive” technologies such as AV/Augmented Technology (combining physical and digital), VR/Virtual Reality (creating alternative realities), and 360 Video. Will we now see cutting-edge collaborative paradigms explode between choreographers and companies working in sync with videographers, cinematographers, and multi-media editors?

Some companies are already considering site-specific works in controlled settings outside traditional performance spaces. Why not commission a full ballet in the Grand Canyon (just down the road) to the Grand Canyon Suite by Ferde Grofe, filmed with drones and enhanced with Augmented Reality, which can then be packaged, promoted, and streamed online for revenue? How many culture-vulture Europeans who aspire to visit the Grand Canyon would pay to experience such a monumental creation from NBT?

Academy of Nevada Ballet. Photo by Shannon Cangey

Thoughts like these probably blow the minds of traditionalists who crave a safe, shared concert hall experience with impeccably produced programs of iconic story ballets and Balanchine oeuvres. Certainly, when the pandemic is vanquished, ballet will return triumphantly to starved audiences packing the house.

Right now, NBT is exploring virtual opportunities for its stunning Nutcracker production. Even in digital form, it surely will continue to astonish the child in all of us. This timeless creation set to Tchaikovsky’s immortal score is part of my emotional DNA and is as powerful today as it was the first I saw it as a wonder-filled young child.

I feel the same way about Alvin Ailey’s 60-year-old Revelations, which transports the entire audience to a Black church on Sunday. Born out of the civil rights movement, Ailey was only 29 when he choreographed the masterpiece that has become the company’s signature piece, now seen by some 25 million fans. It is as relevant and uplifting today in the face of America’s current social justice movement. The dance is virtuosic, iconic, and worthy of undying celebration.

NBT’s Education and Outreach Go Move Dance Program Spring Concert. Photo by Virginia Trudeau

Thankfully, the eternal pantheon of ballet repertoire will always be with us. But NBT’s 2020-21 season may prove to be more than just a digital experiment during this shutdown. The company now has time “to slow down to hurry up.” Precious time to rethink how this amazing art form may be pushed in new directions that “develop new legs” to reach broader audiences and produce new income streams. Time to engage meaningfully with future audiences and supporters. This may indeed prove to be a positive turning point, an unintended consequence of the virus.

Ballet, like all great art disciplines, remains resilient – having outlived plagues, wars, invasions, economic ruin, and natural calamities ever since it took root in the 15th-century courts of the Italian Renaissance.

As NBT approaches its landmark 50th season in 2022, the company is not just building but is instead pioneering an innovative bridge to the future for both artists and audiences. I, for one, welcome the post-pandemic onslaught of next-wave content, ingenious delivery, and outrageously-gifted artists who will wow us beyond imagination. I say, give the future a whirl!

For now, take a bow, Nevada Ballet Theatre. And let us all applaud this home-grown cultural treasure and cheer it on for five more decades. Here’s to the ongoing Dance of Life both on and off the stage!

Crane/ing World Premiere. Choreography by Nicolo Fonte. Photo by Virginia Trudeau