Seasons come alive in Ballet Yuma outdoor performance
Ballet Yuma will interpret the seasons of the year April 17 in its second performance staged outdoors to protect its dancers and their audience from COVID-19.
The football field at Yuma Catholic High School, 2100 W. 28th St., will serve as the venue for the 1 p.m. performance of “The Seasons and Other Works.”
The sensations, joys and other emotions surrounding winter, spring, summer and fall will be interpreted in separate dances choreographed by Ballet Yuma’s artistic directors and executed on a rubberized stage on the field.
The performance brings together about 60 students of Ballet Yuma’s affiliated dance school, Yuma Ballet Academy, ranging in age from about 7 to 18. Their dances be accompanied by the classical music of Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi, downloaded to a thumb drive and carried over the stadium’s public address system.
Ballet Yuma will follow guidelines for containing COVID-19. says Jennifer Coleman, company manager. That means there will be only the 1 p.m. performance and seating will be separated to promote social distancing.
Given limited seating, Coleman urges people to go online to www.BalletYuma.org to purchase tickets in advance, rather than count on buying them at the gate the day of the performance.
“We don’t want to have to turn anyone away,” she said.
Each season of the calendar, she says, comes to life in a separate exhibition, with winter choreographed by Jon Cristofori, spring choreographed by Kathleen Sinclair, summer by Alyssa Myers and fall by Emma Cong.
Other than having a few props, the dancers will perform in what Coleman concedes is a minimalistic setting. But the lack of mechanical workings and adornments of a formal theater stage can serve to bring greater attention to the creativity and imagination that dancers and choreographers put into the performance. They will wear simple but colorful costumes in differing hues associated with each season.
“They can bring it to life so easily with just the looks on their face, not just their movements,” she said.
While the performance will mark the transition of the seasons, its subtext is a story of a ballet company and its dancers adapting to a pandemic that has persisted throughout the year.
In early 2020, Ballet Yuma was a week away from its first performance of the new year, only to see it canceled as part of measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, Coleman said. Other appearances were also on hold.
“That was really hard, because these dancers start rehearsing in August for all the multitude of things we do,” she said.
Students wore face masks to training sessions, and class sizes had to be reduced as part of measures to fight COVID-19. Still, says Coleman, there was the knowledge that other dance schools and troupes in the nation were hit harder, having suspended all activities.
“It’s been really difficult, but we have felt blessed, because we have been able to move forward,” she said.
COVID-19 infection numbers in the area dipped in late summer and early fall, but as fall gave way to winter, the rate climbed again. Ballet Yuma knew it would not be able to put on its holiday production of “The Nutcracker” at it traditional venue, Snider Auditorium.
But it seized on the possibilities of staging the production on the football field. The dancers and choreographers knew they were prepared artistically to perform, said Coleman. It was just a matter of adapting to the conditions of the outdoors.
“It worked really well for ‘The Nutcracker,’ and so we thought, why not do it again in the spring? We can do these things; we just need to revamp how we do it.”
Having successfully adapted to circumstances “put more fire under us to keep moving forward,” she said.
For the upcoming performance, there will be 50 seats separated from one another in front of the stage, with the rest of the audience spread out in the bleachers, she said. Seating will be cleaned prior to the performance.
Audience members will be required to wear masks, and hand sanitizer and hand washing facilities will be available.
To minimize gatherings, concessions and flowers will not be sold at the performance.
“We’re just really excited we can do this for the community,” Coleman said. “We hope the community can come out and support the dancers.”
How long Ballet Yuma will have to perform outdoors is up in the air.
“We are hoping by December we’ll be back in our theater and be able to go to the school for the outreach that we do.”
For more information about “The Seasons and Other Works,” contact Coleman at 928-446-6770 or jennyjumpup@gmail.com.