Season opens with ‘Pillow’ talk
Houston Ballet’s dancers are easing back into the company’s studios for classes, but six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, no one can say when they will be able to perform in front of a live audience at the Wortham Theater Center again.
Still, the show — or some show, at least — must go on, and artistic director Stanton Welch is sounding upbeat about this new, existential normal. Tickets go on sale Sept. 21 for “A Night at Jacob’s Pillow,” which screens Oct. 9-18 on Vimeo. The ballet’s first digital season will include several ondemand programs for $20 each; plus a one-night-only, fundraising Jubilee show for subscribers and donors; and a free dance project shared on social media.
When the pandemic shutdown began in March, the ballet offered recordings of past performances to give its season-ticket holders an option of refunds. It has also created a robust mix of talks and shows that are available free on social media.
Fall’s paid programs add twists. The first show features Welch’s “Just,” which was commissioned by the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in 2018 but has not been performed live in Houston. Welch plans to lead up to “Just” with a week of online artists’ talks.
Welch loves the history of Jacob’s Pillow, a National Historic Landmark in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts that’s home to America’s longest-running dance festival. (Which this year, like everything else, happened only virtually.) Although the Pillow had commissioned Welch previously to create works with other companies, Houston Ballet’s trip two years ago was its first since 1979 — so, an important moment in its history, too.
“Just,” the three-part ballet he choreographed for the Pillow, is a “dark energy” piece Welch probably would not have attempted at home. It was tailormade for the Pillow’s famous barn, an intimate space with a sophisticated audience. “It wasn’t something I felt I could pitch for a bigger venue, but the dancers’ acting is profound,”
Welch said.
The music, in three movements, is by American composer David Lang.
“Just” suggests the story of a couple struggling to stay in love, told mostly through the bodies of three couples. A romance disintegrates
to a striking piano melody in the first section, which features Jessica Collado and Christopher Coomer. Anger erupts, all-consuming, during the percussive second movement, featuring Mackenzie Richter and Brian Waldrep. The third movement brings an emotional reflection.
“Thinking about the third section gives me goose bumps,” Welch said. “It’s spoken word, about memory and loss. Nozomi Iijima and Chun Wai Chan are the couple, and the women around them have seven or eight minutes of consecutive movements to every word.”
Importantly now, the barn’s intimacy yielded a film with more immediate power than big productions shot across the
Wortham. “It’s an amazing venue, with so much history and so many ghosts,” Welch said. “The Pillow has been doing high-quality, archival video since the 1960s.”
Welch said as soon as dancers can rehearse again, he’ll choreograph a new dance-for-camera to the song “Black Lung” by the Canadian group the Dead South, for free social-media distribution.
For now, their work is all about getting their bodies back. They won’t have something akin to a normal class together until next year. Just 24 of 61 company members are in the first wave now taking class alone or with roommates, masked up, taking instruction from remote instructors, in three studios that are booked six hours a day. Another 24 will have access after a month, and the rest are still a question mark, stranded in home countries across the globe.
The working dancers and staff are tested for COVID-19 every two weeks, and Welch is grateful for the company’s partnership with Methodist Hospital. He’s getting medical advice from the same trainers and professionals who treat Houston’s professional sports teams.
Welch will create small-scale dances for an online holiday show that premieres in December. “To be really successful, we have to reach a point where we can choreograph couples, unmasked, partnering,” he said. “Once that hits, there will be live programming. Maybe not with 24 swans, but live.”
He was speaking of shows that would be livestreamed, not danced in front of a live audience. But he doesn’t see online programs going away now or ever, even when audiences return to theaters. There’s opportunity in offering livestream shows, he said. “We’re going to need a hybrid program of everything going forward.”