Director Selects: Reflecting on 5 Years Since the Pandemic

Five years ago last week we canceled performances, sent home the staff, each with their own laptop, and closed down the offices. Like everyone, we were under the illusion that it would be just weeks, but in fact it was nearly 18 months. The staff reconfigured its job responsibilities, and starting in September 2020 we returned to The Soraya one day a week, socially distanced, to produce one of our online programs.

A few months earlier, we had produced from home our first such program in collaboration with the Martha Graham Dance Company. It was filmed and recorded on multiple continents, with dancers and musicians each in their own homes. At that time, it was a project of great complexity.

Immediate Tragedy was the result of good fortune and hard work. It started with a roll of undeveloped film recently discovered in an attic, showing Martha Graham’s 1937 solo protesting the Spanish Civil War. Because the roll of film was intact, we knew the order of the moves. Over the coming weeks, Chris Rountree oversaw a new musical composition, and Janet Eilber led the company’s dancers in locations around the world by way of the clunky 2020 version of Zoom. 

Many viewers were moved by the way the music and dancers depicted the sense of isolation so prevalent at that time, others noted that it evoked the street protests that were ubiquitous in the summer of 2020. As I look back to that time, and share the link to watch above, I am very grateful for the staff and artists who banded together to keep things going here during the only worldwide closure of theaters that mankind has ever known. More so, today, I am grateful that chapter is behind us, with the seats of The Soraya filled again. Just this past week we had three sold out performances, and there’s nothing more uplifting than being in the presence of a live audience.

Gratefully,

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