Talking, texting in middle of performance? Dancers know

WASHINGTON – Standing downstage during a performance of Mark Morris’ dance-opera “Layla and Majnun” in the spring, Noah Vinson gazed out beyond the stage. Like the other members of the Mark Morris Dance Group, he was counting musical beats in his head, waiting for his cue to move. Beyond the first rows of seats, he saw only darkness as he looked toward the audience in the Kennedy Center Opera House.

Suddenly, the void was illuminated with a moving spot of light. Vinson recognized it as an usher with a flashlight. “Wow, someone’s coming in really late,” he thought, as his focus was pulled away from the music. Soon, there were more flashlights among the seats. In their glow, Vinson was able to see medical personnel rolling a wheelchair down the aisle.

He later found out that a man in the orchestra section had become ill and that his wife feared he had suffered a stroke; he was taken to the hospital. The ensuing drama, carried out in whispers, lasted many minutes and drew the attention of patrons throughout the theater.

From the stage, the dancers were absorbed in it, too, even as they struggled to block out what was happening and keep up with the music.

“You’re trying to maintain composure and do what you have to do, but, you know, what’s going on?” Vinson says. “You make eyes with the other dancers, and you’re all like, ‘What’s going on? Should we stop?’ Everyone was confused and concentrating on what was happening.”

It can seem as though there’s an ocean of separation between the audience in its darkened seats and the performers high up onstage, but is there, really? What do dancers perceive beyond the stage while they’re performing?

A lot, as it turns out. There’s a dynamic relationship between live performers and the audience. Just as dancers, actors and musicians amuse, provoke or otherwise move their public, the public moves them. Muttering in the seats can be heard onstage. So can the odd argument and ringtones. The sounds and behaviors of spectators can affect dancers’ psychology and even performance quality. They’re energized by cheers, of course, and demoralized when they’re expecting applause or laughter and there’s only silence. But they pick up on far more.

“You hear rustling around, sometimes talking, and coughing, for sure,” Vinson says. “Sometimes there’s that one person who doesn’t have a cough drop. It’s like, ‘Wow, you’re gonna cough during the entire performance?’ “

Depending on the venue and the choreographic demands, dancers can tell when ticket holders come in late (especially if they’re being guided by flashlights), when they’re dozing and – the worst infraction, many say – when their phones light up because they’re scrolling or texting.

“It makes your heart drop,” says Alexis Evans-Krueger, who dances with Peter Chu’s Las Vegas-based troupe chuthis and with the baroque-burlesque Company XIV in Brooklyn. “‘Cause you work so hard.”

Dancers say that even small disruptions from the audience can be concentration-busters. When performing, their senses are heightened, and they’re hyper-attuned to what’s happening around them. That’s in addition to the high level of acuity they’ve developed just by being dancers. Body sensation, spatial perception, musical alertness and internalizing other people’s emotions: Much of the dancer’s art depends heavily on awareness.

So just as we are watching them, they are watching us.

Or at least, feeling us, in one way or another. “A full house feels warm,” says Justin Metcalf-Burton, a former member of Ballet Arkansas. “You can feel the collective body heat.”

That’s how sold-out “Nutcracker” shows feel. But come February, when ballet companies program “the cool stuff” – by which Metcalf-Burton means the less-marketable premieres and experimental works that dancers get excited about – the smaller audiences can make dancers feel as though they’re “trapped in a paper bag inside a shed, and no one can hear you.”

“The energy of an audience is so palpable,” says Elisa Clark, a former member of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Mark Morris Dance Group. “You can feel when an audience is engaged. . . . If there are empty seats, you can feel it. People will come offstage saying, ‘It just feels like there’s nobody out there.’ “

One of the oldest dance customs has to do with dancers’ perception of the audience – specifically, how it smells. You may have heard that dancers whisper “merde” to one another backstage before they perform, for good luck. Merde is a French word, meaning, to put it politely, manure. Its origins as a dance-friendly form of “break a leg” are unclear, but one account goes back to Paris, where, centuries ago, the stink of horse manure rose when the streets were full of carriages. Likewise, in the theaters, dancers could tell the size of the crowd by its smell; the worse it smelled, the bigger it was. So dancers wished one another “merde” in the hopes they’d encounter a full, fragrant house once they stepped onstage.