This barre is open With distancing restrictions in place, Royal Winnipeg Ballet dancers are staying on their toes By: Jen Zoratti / Photos by Ruth Bonneville Posted: 7:00 PM CST Friday, Nov. 6, 2020

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This article was published 05/11/2020 (1512 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

At first, it looks like a typical Monday morning in a fourth-floor studio at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.

Some company dancers are stretching, clad in post-class sweatpants and socks. Others are up on pointe shoes, practising a difficult run of quick-footed choreography.

Look closer, though, and the new normal, the COVID-19 normal, reveals itself. Their ranks are smaller, for one; the company’s dancers have been split up into cohorts of eight. They are distanced from each other and cannot touch, with zones taped out on the floor. Numbers above the barre indicate where they can drop their duffel bags, water bottles and anything else they may need for the day. There are no dressing rooms.

And then, of course, there are the masks, which must be worn at all times — even during hours of dancing. The fabric billows and contracts with their breath, a visual reminder that these graceful, elegant dancers are also athletes.

In an ordinary year, the RWB would be fresh off an October opening and well into rehearsals for December’s annual run of Nutcracker, which, like most everything else this year, has been cancelled.

But it’s not just the lack of live performance and inability to gather large audiences that has altered the company’s plans for the season. Ballet is a contact art. As artistic director André Lewis told the Free Press in the summer: “You can’t do a pas de deux six feet apart.”

So, the RWB is getting creative within the limits placed upon it by the pandemic. In a callback to the popular Fast Forward performance series the company did the ‘80s and ‘90s, RWB dancers are choreographing original works with each other, to avoid bringing in outside choreographers who would have to travel and then have to self-isolate. And because the works are new, they can be exactly what they need.

“It has been the most fantastic experience,” says ballet mistress Caroline Gruber, who has just led this cohort through this morning’s class and is now overseeing rehearsals. “They’ve been so committed and enthusiastic and very grateful to be back in the studio and working.”

Gruber, too, is thankful to be back in the studio working; it beats teaching ballet via Zoom from her kitchen, which is what she did all spring.

“The dancers, I tell them they’re my heroes,” she says. “They stuck it out and kept going.”

The company didn’t return to the studio until October. It has been an anchoring experience for the dancers.

“It’s been nice to have a constant for the first time in six months,” says corps de ballet dancer Sarah Joan Smith. “Most of us were doing ballet in our homes — like, in our carpeted living rooms or at our kitchen counters — and not doing it in a community setting. So having that bit of normalcy has been really nice.”

Smith is one of the dancers who is trying her hand at choreography for the first time. She’s also dancing in a particularly demanding piece choreographed by her fellow corps de ballet dancer — and fellow first-time choreographer — Peter Lancksweerdt. During the 11 a.m. rehearsal, Smith, along with soloist Yayoi Ban, corps de ballet dancer Jenna Burns and apprentice Brooke Thomas, are figuring out a particularly speedy phrase that is, quite literally, keeping them on their toes, set to a sprightly piece by Belgian singer Jacques Brel.

“It’s nothing groundbreaking that I’m making or anything, but I’m having fun and I think the dancers are having fun — even though I made it really hard for the ladies,” Lancksweerdt says with a laugh in between rehearsals. Lancksweerdt is also from Belgium, and grew up with the music of Brel, known for such widely recorded hits as Ne Me Quitte Pas and Madeleine. “I think it’s very poetic and danceable; there are so many sources of inspiration in the lyrics.”

The biggest challenge of the past few months, he says, was staying in shape. “The end of March, all of April, May, even June, no dance studios at all. So it was living room, trying to stay in shape. I got out of shape at one point for sure. I think everybody did. So, getting back was, and still is sometimes, confronting.”

Dancing in a mask, too, has been a challenge.

“That was quite an adjustment. But we have to deal with it. As annoying as it is, we’ve gotta do it and we know why we do it. Sometimes, it felt like I’d just run out of air. I mean, I’m sure I was fine, and they’ve proven that you’re not going to choke, it’s fine, but it felt like as if I was drowning.” (Masks also limit a dancer’s range of facial expressions, but as second soloist Liam Caine later proves in a beautiful piece choreographed for him by Lancksweerdt, a lot can be done with just the eyes and brows.)

After the four women leave the floor, it’s time for soloists Chenxin Liu and Yue Shi to practise their pas de deux. They are among the few who can come into contact with one another: only couples who cohabitate can dance together and, as it worked out, each of the three cohorts contains a couple.

Lancksweerdt has included both a fall and a toss in his choreography that rely on Shi catching Liu. Liu lets out a tiny shriek during the toss.

“Remember: the scarier it is for you the nicer it looks to us,” Lancksweerdt tells them, which gets a laugh.

Liu and Shi feel fortunate that they have each other, both at home and in the studio.

“I just can’t imagine people being alone at home through the quarantine,” Shi says.

“We’re so lucky we can dance together,” Liu says. “We can touch each other.”

Shi has also choreographed a pas de deux for the pair. “It was very difficult,” he says. “And I couldn’t see what I was doing, because I have to dance with her. Making a pas de deux for other people would be easier because I can watch.”

“I was trying so hard to not give him a hard time,” Liu says with a laugh.

Liu is also dancing in Smith’s piece, so she swaps out her pointe shoes for socks. Smith’s piece, set to the dreamy Untitled #3 (Samskeyti) by Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós, uses more contemporary ballet vocabulary. Basically, it’s the spiritual opposite of Nutcracker.

“In my previous company, I did a lot more of the contemporary, in-socks kind of thing and I’ve really missed that kind of movement,” she says. “I thought, if I’m going to be part of a process that has that kind of movement, I might have to create it.”

The uncertainty of the pandemic has also given Smith a now-or-never outlook; even though the idea of stepping into a choreography role scared her, she figured she best seize on the chance while it’s here.

Ban, Liu, Burns and Thomas — now in tights and T-shirts — show their range, just as comfortable with fluid contemporary movement as they were with Lancksweerdt’s bourées. Smith gives them notes, verbally. She cannot offer physical corrections.

Smith is clad in a well-loved Nutcracker T-shirt from a 2010 tour, the only nod to the Christmas classic in the studio this year.

“I think it’s exciting we get to do something different,” Smith says. “So much of our world is different right now I wouldn’t even expect to be doing Nutcracker right now.”

For her part, ballet mistress Gruber is in awe of the dancers’ attitudes. “I wanted to come back and keep everybody positive, and it hasn’t been hard work because they have, thus far, been very positive. But I really wanted to make sure everybody is good mentally as well as physically.”

She also hopes that when her dancers can once again grace the stage at the Centennial Concert Hall, whenever that may be, people will be there to see them.

“I just hope audience members stay with us,” she says. “Don’t forget about us, even though we’re not out there performing. (I hope) that the good people of Winnipeg will remember how important we are to the culture of the city, and that we will be back.”

Fast Forward: Innovative Dance Inspired by Dancers features nine new works by company dancers and will be available via livestream to RWB subscribers and donors from Nov. 27 through Nov. 29. The company hopes to deliver similar performances to a broader audience in the future.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JenZoratti