BALLET IN LONDON
How the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the class and rehearsal experience for ballet dancers.
What changed and what changes are they
still navigating?
Photo credit: Kateryna Hrynchak
SYNOPSIS
About this project
Initially, I set out to explore London and the senses through an ethnography on the use of digital technology to enable accessible and inclusive theatre experiences, working with a theatre company. However, due to restrictions imposed in January 2022 and the presence of the more contagious variant of COVID-19, the theatre company requested I not attend rehearsals as the company works exclusively with Deaf and disabled actors, many of whom were higher-risk and immunocompromised. Therefore, in mid-February 2022, maintaining my interest in exploring the digital and the arts through this project, I shifted my focus to ballet and sought out a new group of participants to engage.
This project examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on amateur ballet dancers' experience. As London went into lockdown in spring 2020, classes and rehearsals moved online. Dancers had to get creative in setting up home rehearsal spaces using counter tops and chairs in place of ballet barres. As lockdowns eased in 2021, ballet companies returned to studios for training and rehearsals. Local studios opened with many retaining online or hybrid classes to accommodate restricted capacity, or preferences of some dancers to remain at home. This project compares the experience of at-home training and in-studio training to explore the question of how the sense of touch and hearing changed the way ballet dancers experienced classes during the pandemic. Through this ethnography I demonstrate that, apart from the impact on touch and sound mediated by the digital in the online classes, there is another sensorial experience emphasised by dancers that is outside of the typical five senses.
CAST & CHARACTERS
Participants & Positionality
The participants are amateur ballet dancers who danced with the a London-based ballet company ("the Company"). They come from around the world - Canada, France, Hong Kong, Ukraine and the UK - and all live and work in London. They are able-bodied women in their mid to late 20's and early 30's. The Company was formed specifically for adult amateur dancers with a high-degree of training, but who are not pursuing dance as a career. Members of the company have varying professional backgrounds and typically work during the weekdays. The Company rehearses 2 hours per week on weeknight evenings. Prior to COVID, the company performed a minimum of two shows per year. As a former member of The Company (I left at the end of 2019), I was still a member of the WhatsApp groups and able to reconnect with three members I used to dance with, and two who agreed to participate who I had not met previously.
During the period in which I conducted my ethnography, the company had returned to studio rehearsals, however membership had suffered over the course of the pandemic. From spring 2018 to the end of 2019, I danced with 14 other cast members, yet as of February 2022 the cast had dwindled to six. Though I had secured permission to rejoin company rehearsals at the end of February, in early March it was announced that the company Director would be moving on, implicating my ability to attend as the company adjusted. In mid-March of 2022, unable to bolster attendance, The Company elected to suspend the company, with the intention to re-open in May or June. Maintaining my relationships with five participants, we made plans to attend open classes at other studios in London. In late March and early April, I attended a mix of online classes and in-person classes at two different studios in London.
Finally, I also connected with a teacher and choreographer that I, and another participant, attended classes with. I conducted an interview to learn from his experience and perspective as someone who teaches varying levels of ballet and had to adapt his teaching to be first solely online, and now in a hybrid environment. While a teacher's perspective is not the primary focus of this research, I believe it was informative and I have included his perspectives in the Findings section, clearly stated as ‘teacher/choreographer’ input.
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I am trained in ballet and formerly danced with The Company. This experience gave me access to the participants as a peer and allowed me to speak to them with a shared background in the artform. While I was a member of The Company, I left at the end of 2019 after the winter show. I have not trained with them since, other than attending one class as a ‘guest’ in April 2020, online. While my familiarity with the artform gave me the ability to speak in depth about the experience as I have an understanding of what training typically consists of, it meant staying alert to not conflating my experiences or assumptions in my research to allow myself to observe anew or to be surprised in what I learned.
PRODUCTION
Methodology
I conducted my research using three ethnographic methods including participant observation, interviews and autoethnography. Observation and my autoethnography were collectively conducted through online and in-studio class participation. It is important to emphasise the necessity of conducting an autoethnography. Dance anthropologists note the imperative of this methodology of experiencing the movement personally in order to accurately describe the embodied knowledge, beyond what is viewable to a member of the audience or observer (Sklar 2000, Potter 2008). My autoethnographic participation was particularly important to this research. I had not been regularly or rigorously training in ballet for the two years since I left The Company, therefore I had not participated in the online training or attending in studio classes when they had reopening in the autumn of 2021.
Connecting with the participants typically occurred in informal conversations before and after classes and via a WhatsApp group used to coordinate class attendance. I conducted structured interviews, two in person and two online, with four of participants, to add personal testimony and description to the descriptions of experiences shared in informal conversations between classes. I also requested dancers to send me photos of their home dance spaces as that was one domain that, due to COVID-19, I was not able to conduct on-site observation. For online classes, I recorded my own class experience. For the in-studio experience, I was able to gain permission from four of the participants to film a weekend rehearsal to include in this project.
THE SCENES & SET
London and the senses
I sought out to explore how the at home experience of the senses of touch and sound compare to the experience of dancing in the studio. I was initially interested in understanding how different materials used in place of a ballet barre, flooring and space constraints impacted the experience of the dancer. Additionally, with respect to sound, many classes in London have a live musician present and was curious to learn if and how pre-recorded music through Zoom impacted the dancers’ connection to the movement.
As I experienced through my autoethnographic exploration, and reinforced in conversations and interviews with participants, the sensorial experience was more nuanced than descriptions of touch and sound are able to capture. What the dancers and I experienced was the interaction of touch and sound with what Sklar (2000) refers to as kinesthesia - the sense of motion and movement. Sklar (2000) describes kinesthesia as a somatic embodiment of knowledge that theorises the anthropology of dance as producing knowledge beyond that which is captured by the five senses. The following sections intend to demonstrate the similarities and differences between in-studio and at home ballet class. I then detail my findings and recommendations for further research as part of the Finale.
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I encourage you to first explore this elements of this project before reading further into the findings of this project. Where I believe it to be important to the project, I have included "Ballet 101" details to provide context for anyone who isn't familiar with ballet class details and structure that dancers will take for granted. A recommended pathway for exploring this project is to start in the studio and then go on from there.
Get a sense of what was 'normal' before COVID-19, and what most dancers have returned to since reopening.
The current experience of a hybrid class taken from home, broadcast from the studio. This also gives a sense of what the lockdown experience was like when all classes were offered at home only.
I provide a short, simple activity to invite you to have your own sensorial experience of movement, akin to the dancers'.
The 'finale', or conclusions of the research details the comparison through the perspectives of the dancers (myself included) and the teacher.
CREDITS
References
Potter, Caroline. 2008. “Sense of Motion, Senses of Self: Becoming a Dancer.” Ethnos Journal of Anthropology 73 (4): 444–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141840802563915.
Sklar, Deidre. 2000. “Reprise: On Dance Ethnography.” Dance Research Journal 32 (1): 70–77. https://doi.org/10.2307/1478278.