Arts groups learn to cope with the pandemic, prepare to return to performances
Finally, the unplanned 18-month intermission for arts and culture in South Florida has drawn to a close. With season openings staggered throughout the fall, dancers and actors and musicians will share indoor theater spaces with audiences eager to become part of the communal thrill of a live performance. After a digital-ascendant 20002021 season, arts groups and cultural organizations have planned, revised and tweaked 2021-2022 lineups aimed at a return to normal — whatever “normal” may now mean.
Acknowledging the uncertainty that comes with COVID-19, Florida Grand Opera’s General Director and CEO Susan T. Danis says with a sigh, “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the pool ...”
Yet artists and artistic leaders like Danis are optimists, ever ready to pivot, adjust and meet the moment. Even before President Joe Biden’s announcement of vaccine mandates, both Miami’s Arsht Center and Fort Lauderdale’s Broward Center set regional safety standards by example, requiring masks and either a recent negative COVID-19 test or proof of vaccination for anyone attending a performance or working in their facilities.
Victoria Rogers, the Knight Foundation’s vice president of arts, isn’t certain how quickly audiences will feel comfortable returning to large performing arts venues, even with such extensive measures in place. But she believes that return is vital.
“Art for me is such a visceral experience. The intake of breath, the gasps, the laughs, the cheering ... and it goes on,” she says. “I’m a people person. When you can ask questions, see art, contemplate it, have debates — you learn so much more when you can physically experience it.”
The pandemic, tough as it was and continues to be, proved to be a period of introspection, adaptation and fresh modes of expression for artists and arts institutions alike. And in all likelihood, many of those shifts will endure.
Just a few of the innumerable lessons from the long intermission:
Artists and audiences don’t have to be in the same facility — or even in the same country — to make a meaningful connection.
Digital content can have stand-alone value, provide additional depth to an arts experience and be a way of reaching audiences unable or unwilling to experience a performance in person.
The connective power of the arts, the opportunity to look at the world through the lens of an artist and see ourselves in others who might seem quite different, enriches life in an irreplaceable way.
Acknowledging the arts and cultural institutions as key economic drivers — not just aesthetic add-ons to everyday life — every level of government, foundations, philanthropists and ticket holders-turned-donors pitched in to make sure the arts could survive huge pandemic losses.
For organizations large and small during the pandemic, necessity was the mother of invention — and reinvention.
For Ashlee Thomas — choreographer, dancer, actor, arts administrator and co-founder of MUCE (the Miami Urban Contemporary Experience) — remote work paired with outdoor gatherings at MUCE’s Little Haiti campus will continue.
Now in graduate studies in musical theater at New York University, Thomas