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 The first time I cried watching someone dance in their living room was in April last year. A few weeks into the first lockdown, unnerved by sudden confinement, there was ballerina Céline Gittens on my laptop screen, bourréeing past a pot plant. Then in a different living room, cellist António Novais drawing out a Saint-Saëns melody, and in another house, pianist Jonathan Higgins, all deeply engrossed in this re-creation of The Dying Swan, music crossing the divide.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the dance that appeared online was all about trying to connect. That’s what was moving about Birmingham Royal Ballet’s The Swan, or the Alvin Ailey company’s dancers performing Revelations in their New York apartments, or the companies doing their ritual daily class over Zoom and inviting us to watch or join in. It was a way of witnessing people apart but moving in harmony, absorbed in the same actions, finding a rhythm together, closing the distance.

Back then, it felt a bit transgressive to be seeing inside people’s homes. Especially ballet dancers who are often very protected by their companies, glamorous in public and aware of curating their own image. On stage, they trade in their ability to seem apart from mere mortals, but here they were surrounded by the detritus of life, radiators and washing-up paraphernalia and carefully arranged sofa cushions.

Not all of the films popping up were confined within four walls. Dancers found new stages in their spookily vacant cities, like Dutch National Ballet in the empty streets of Amsterdam or Alonzo King’s dancers getting deep with Californian nature. Creativity bubbled, and while companies dug out archive recordings to broadcast, dancers and choreographers plotted how to make the most of the situation at hand. You can see how thinking progressed in the space of one evening broadcast in May from US choreographer Mark Morris. It starts with a dance transposed from the studio to people’s homes, with limited success, then switches to making moves for the camera lens, playing with closeups, edits and framing.

There was plenty of imagination about what you could do with boxes on screen: the Juilliard school’s epic Bolero, Australian Ballet’s Giselle skit, Ed Myhill’s synchronised Clapping and with some grander production values, Corey Baker’s glorious take on Swan Lake, performed entirely in bathtubs. Geographical borders became immaterial, whether the collaborators were international ballet stars, amateur shape-shifters or tween B-girls.

Where dance really thrived was on Instagram and TikTok, from silly family dance challenges to star turns (literally, many, many pirouettes and fouette turns) You could do a dancealong party with Sia choreographer Ryan Heffington, join Beyoncé favourites Les Twins in their mum’s basement, or go down a rabbit hole discovering new routines. (Or that’s what I did, at least)

Or buy here : Ballet Dancer There are so many people out there and say watch me poster

Ballet Dancer There are so many people out there and say watch me poster

As soon as it was possible, dancers were back in the studio, wearing masks, grouped in bubbles, at first only housemates and couples allowed to dance together (this was a good time to be in a relationship with another dancer). Some built social distancing into the dance, like the two-metre-diameter skirts in Will Tuckett’s Lazuli Sky. New work was made for screen with a more filmic sensibility – Jonzi D’s potent Our Bodies Back, five ambitious commissions from English National Ballet’s digital season, a livestreamed premiere from Rambert, Draw from Within, performed in their own studios, the camera tailing them around the building.

 

 

 

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