The city’s performing artists are leaving stages behind to get back to work.
Instead, they’re performing on rooftops, in gardens, and in the middle of the street, aided by state and city programs and individual organizers intent on giving them a chance to get back to work, even if the payoff is more symbolic than profitable.
“It’s exciting to be dancing outdoors,” said Morgan McEwan, a dancer who is the founder and artistic director of MorDance, a company that usually performs at Hunter College’s Kaye Playhouse.
With eight of her dancers, she will set up on each Wednesday afternoon on lower Sixth Avenue beginning in July, moving to Saturdays come October.
But planning is neither easy nor cheap: she will have to locate an outlet for her extension cord and remember to print signage and bring sanitizer. There’s also the issue of choreography, since the dances must be rethought “for the challenge of dancing in sneakers on concrete,” she said.
Though state rules that went into effect April 2 allow indoor venues to operate at 33% capacity to a maximum of 150, arts organizations say that the outdoors represent the smoothest path to performing again soon after a year of very few in-person events. So far, organizers say that putting on shows outdoors has been challenging but rewarding, both for performers and their audiences.
“We were stunned by the crowd’s response,” said Matthew Aubin, the artistic director of the Chelsea Symphony, about the first of the monthly shows put on outside Chelsea Market. The performance was a collaboration with the nonprofit StreetLab and sponsored by the market and the Department of Cultural Affairs. It was a chilly day in early March. Still, crowds who might have watched for just a moment on a busy weekend in 2019 stayed for the full concert, which featured a single percussionist. (More sections of the orchestra will join in future concerts.) “The player himself was like, ‘I felt the pressure to keep playing’ even though he had already done the same set three times,” Aubin said.
But financially, the benefits of outdoor shows remain to be seen, even as they draw praise from organizers and artists who are satisfied to be performing again. Jobs in arts, entertainment, and recreation fell by 66% last year, compared to 2019, according to a state comptroller’s report and the lost work isn’t limited to performers: with their budgets cut, donations shrunken, and ticket sales gone, arts organizations also had to let staff go and end relationships with stage managers and lighting designers. Many performing artists have left the city, while others, accustomed to gig work, have been able to patch together income from online performances and teaching, out-of-town in-person events, and unemployment benefits.
Beginning next week, many performance spaces are eligible to apply for the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, whose funds will make up all or most of 2020’s lost revenue for small theaters and companies.
To promote the arts, the city’s program, called Open Culture, offers permits for $20 per month for ticketed or free events at dozens of streets and plazas across the boroughs.
In the past, fees per day for outdoor events amounted to $25,000 for for-profit organizations and $5,000 for nonprofits.
Still, that leaves the organizations with the burden of paying for performers and either paying for or doing the event coordination themselves. Meanwhile, the state’s arts revitalization effort focuses on a series of events called NY PopsUp that are run by a professional production company, Good Sense and Company, with a team of producers and artists acting as advisors. The events take place both inside and outside, are intended to help boost arts-related tourism, and support a wide swath of artists and companies—but by no means all of them. The original projection for NY PopsUp was $5.5 million for 300 events across the state, with money coming from Empire State Development’s marketing budget. That figure could change if closed venues being used for PopsUp performances open later in the summer, or if new arts funding comes through in next week’s budget.
Paying to perform
After Open Culture opened its permit application on March 1, McEwan applied for 18 days for MorDance and got 14; she said the processing was quick and the city was helpful. Open Culture will grant each organization at most four permits per month per location. There were 44 events scheduled over month from April 2 to May 2, according to the New York City events website, which posts only 30 days at a time.
Permits in hand, McEwan thought about what to do with her block, on Sixth Avenue between Spring and Broome Streets. One challenge: “We haven’t been rehearsing for a year,” she said. Instead of renting studio space for months in advance of the first permit date, a substantial cost, she decided to use her plot as an open rehearsal. “That brings our costs down to just artist compensation,” she said.
She made other tweaks: since putting down a dance floor in accordance with regulations would have made the stage tiny, the ballerinas will wear sneakers instead of ballet shoes and avoid jumping since concrete is so hard. Ticketing would have required more expenses to close off the street to people who hadn’t paid admission, so the event will be free, with the goal of attracting a new audience to MorDance. In the past, she said, audiences have loved getting to attend dress rehearsals. Though open rehearsals haven’t yet begun, she is enthusiastic: “the program is amazing, but as a small organization there are obstacles.”
But Open Culture permits do not require that artists are paid. And the PopsUp program seemed to happen outside the existing network of many small arts organization, and some they felt overlooked.
Kimberly Giannelli and Melissa Gerstein didn’t wait for the city’s Open Culture applications to open before planning four rooftop dance performances for April 11 at the Empire Hotel. After hearing from dancers who felt financially unstable and unsupported in their careers after a year out of work, they decided profits would go to dancers in need.
Tickets range from $200 to $1000 and are $50 for the livestream. Dancers from American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and New York City Ballet are involved. After they found a sponsor to fund the venue rental, they began recruiting dancers who will be paid for the solos and duets they perform.
Any paid work is welcome right now, said Wendy LaManque of American Guild of Musical Artists, a union that represents artists at professional ballet and opera companies around the country, including in New York City. “After 13 months of our industries ground to a halt, we look at that as a good thing, even though we want to be back in the studio fully,” she said. AGMA has negotiated on behalf of members who are in NY PopsUp events, and everyone has agreed to a fee and to safety protocols. The payment is hard to compare to regular work, she said, since dancers are usually on weekly contracts, not paid per project.
The thrill of the stage
For many artists and nonprofits, a year of hard times is nothing new. The most important thing—as it has always been—is to perform.
Giannelli and Gerstein said that the artists who signed on came for the ability to dance in front of an audience, as much as for the payment. “It’s like oxygen, they can’t breathe” without dance, said Gerstein.
Amar Smalls had just completed his first international tour with company Ailey II when the governor ordered venues closed. He claimed unemployment benefits at first, then began making money through new approaches: teaching online classes, selling clothes he designed and performing in virtual gigs. At 21, his dance career is only just beginning, and so even though he has been able to make ends meet over the last year, getting back in the studio to rehearse for his performance at iHeartDance has been heartening. “Being on stage in front of people again, that’s the important thing,” he said.
“They need to get to do what they trained for their whole life,” echoed Gerstein. “So they’re not having to move back home, move in with family, they’re not having to wait in the wings for life to resume.”
SOURCE: Section Page News – Crain’s New York Business – Read entire story here.