HOUSTON AS STAGE
The Bayou City is the backdrop for Houston Ballet’s latest project.
The city is its stage for now, and the theater might be no bigger than the smartphone in your hand.
But limitations can be inspiring. That’s become a mantra at Houston Ballet, which is getting this resilience thing down.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought exponentially bigger challenges than Hurricane Harvey, but artistic director Stanton Welch is determined to keep the company humming artistically. At least through the end of this year, that means producing only dance-for-camera works. The latest, “Restoration,” debuts as a free offering Nov. 10.
Though Houston Ballet has not yet committed to a fully virtual 2020-21 season like its peers in other cities and Houston Grand Opera, digital dances are looking more and more like a lifeline for a company that has thrived by creating new ballets. “Diving into this world is what keeps it alive for us,” Welch says.
He has not had time to mope as he figures out new ways to be both the choreographer and film director. Welch has spent most of his career making dances for big, proscenium stages, mindful of the “movement architecture” and patterns that might be seen from a theater’s upper rows of seats, composed of movements that face the audience from a distance. Now he has a multitude of other decisions to process that begin with camera angles, close-ups versus full-body views and the pacing of sequences.
“I like planning, but this is a whole different level,” he says. “This is unrelentingly complex.”
In-house videographer David Rivera, who was recently promoted to associate director of audio and visual services, is behind the camera. He filmed “Restoration” at 19 outdoor locations across Houston on a couple of hot days in October, but not before lighting designer Lisa J. Pinkham had plotted where the sun and light would be for each scene, relying on a compass and Mother Nature rather than her usual computerized motherboard.
At the mercy of the elements
Welch refers to the logistically complicated project as “guerrilla filming,” in part because the crew and performers were at the mercy of the elements in open, public environments. He had one-on-one rehearsals with some of the dancers. Others worked more on the fly, after learning the dance through Zoom sessions. They costumed themselves, with outfits from their own closets.
For dancers who are accustomed to “speaking” with their entire bodies, virtual works are a new kind of micro-exercise. “This time we had to perform into the camera, to look with our eyes,” says soloist Jacquelyn Long. “You’re so much more aware of details.”
The stop-and-start business of filming also can play havoc with flow. “There are pros and cons,” soloist Alyssa Springer says. “In a live performance, you do everything once, the best you can, and move on. With video, you can easily reset, do it again, get a better shot. And we want to do it best every time … . We’re also used to hearing a whole piece of music to know where we are, and with filming, it can start at any point.”
Welch says he’s being careful to meet the dancers where they are physically and mentally in the early days of their return to work, after about seven months of forced isolation. His virtual choreography is progressively easing them back into shape. Pedestrian movements drive most of “Restoration,” with steps simple enough to be danced in street shoes. The women will be back in pointe shoes and tutus for an upcoming holiday show. They also are rehearsing a new 30-minute dance for early next year that Welch says will have an “exhausting” mix of demanding tours en l’air, fouettes and jumps.
Along with ramping up the dancing, he wants increasingly polished production values. Rivera compiled summer’s “Dancing With Myself” from clips of the dancers filming themselves. The next videos will be shot in the controlled conditions of Houston Ballet’s black box theater. “That’s in our zone,” Welch says.
Missing classical ballet
Other strides are happening off camera. The dancers have returned to the company’s studios for small-scale classes and rehearsals. They work in pods of no more than six masked people. The past week brought another leap, literally, with permission to leave their designated, distanced squares to practice grand jetés and other space-eating steps. (The company partners with Methodist Hospital on its health protocols.)
Dancers are not complaining. “Most of us are just happy to be working and doing something creative,” Long says. “It’s much better than my living room. I’m now trying to lengthen out my arabesque again.” She spent the spring and summer with family in Virginia, where the obstacles included a dog who thought her practices were about play. “I really just want to dance. You become super grateful for what you have,” she adds. “It just feels good to get back into the studio, so I feel like I’m moving up and not stagnant.”
Springer feels the same. “This has been like a welcoming home. I had my first class in the lab a week ago, and it kind of made me emotional,” she says. “You walk in, the lights are on, the stage space … It’s been really difficult not to be able to perform.” She used some of the extended time off to take extra online classes toward a degree in psychology.
Do they miss classical dancing? Both ballerinas respond without hesitation. Yes. “It’s weird. It’s going to be a year since I’ve worn a tutu,” Springer says. “I know we’ll get there. It is what it is, and we’re doing our best, staying inspired and motivated … . We’re all really excited to get to be with each other in the studio. That elevates everything to another level.”
Finding inspiration in the Dead South
Welch calls it a happy accident that he found the song “Black Lung,” by the Canadian indie-bluegrass-steampunk band the Dead South. The lyrics are about a West Virginia miner who can’t break out of poverty. The first line goes, “Basically, we are all alone at the center of a pickaxe mine.” Doesn’t sound so optimistic, although a lot of people can relate this year.
But in the band’s persistent, earthy rhythms, Welch hears resilience more than existential dread. “It has so many choices and moods, with the natural, organic rhythms of the banjo and their voices,” he says. “There’s a sense of coming back, like that growing rhythm of ‘Bolero,’ and what that feels like in this new time, this new world.” He has had his ears on the Dead South for two or three years, for a different project — the one that is now becoming next spring’s 30-minute virtual ballet.
“It’s different but fun to have that grounded feeling with the music,” Long says. She and Springer were not familiar with the Dead South’s music until they were asked to dance to it. Springer has become a fan. “It kinda just makes you want to groove,” she says.
Welch’s dance is “about returning and coming back from our previous normal,” Long says. “We’re showing our audiences we can get through anything, like we got through Harvey.” That applies to the whole city, not just its ballet company, she adds. “It’s very Houston proud.”
Without giving too much away before it premieres, we’ll just say the film’s climax captures an infectious spirit of community togetherness. That scene enabled Houston Ballet’s dancers to be somewhat fully together again for the first time since March, delivering what Long calls “a real strength moment.”
“We’ve all been working in these voids,” Welch says. “That was a big, cathartic step.”