AB'sMom

Patrick Frenette has posted on his Instagram, on more than one occasion since this crisis started, his frustrations trying to get through to New York’s unemployment office. I think the crisis fund is also meant to support not only the dancers, but also the pianists, stage managers, foreign dancers who aren’t eligible for unemployment, and others impacted by the unexpected layoff.

Segerstrom just extended their closing until April 30.

A lot of ballet schools and Pilates studios are using Zoom to teach classes. I think the Instagram classes serve a purpose as well—they were up quickly before many studios had their classes up and running and they also made dancers feel less alone. The situation is obviously not ideal, especially for people who tend to be perfectionists used to working many hours a day, nearly every day, but feeling a sense that they are all in this together has eased some very real anxieties.

It is helpful that most of them can apply for unemployment. Foreign dancers and young dancers who have only recently become employed are not eligible and are struggling right now. James Whiteside and Isabella Boylston are streaming ballet classes and including a link for voluntary donations to the Dancer’s Emergency Fund.

A lot of companies have canceled all classes and rehearsals. You can see dancers on Instagram doing barre work in their apartments. Unless they release prerecorded video, I don’t know that there would be much to see.

Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa has cancelled all performances through March 31 and the ABT Gillespie School has cancelled classes until April 13.

Teuscher was scheduled to dance and was in California. Hopefully she just wasn’t feeling well and that it isn’t anything serious.

I think so. It’s a lot of story to pack in. It didn’t feel long.

Hee Seo/Calvin Royal are dancing Saturday night. Shevchenko and Forster are dancing Sunday matinee.

I wish I knew more about ballet so I could give better commentary. The best way I can explain things would be to say that rather than being a ballet where there is a lot of mime and people standing on the sides of the stage, broken up by stretches of either the Corp de ballet or a pas de deux or a solo (I know that’s a broad generalization), nearly everyone on stage is moving most of the time. I did sometimes wish for a break in the busyness of it all, thinking it would perhaps make the dramatic moments more dramatic. But I loved that conversations were shorts bursts of choreography, if that makes any sense, and that they used a chorus of dancers since it is a staple of Greek drama. The men in particular seemed to get more choreography than is typical. I’ll see how I feel after at least one more viewing. For now I’ll say that I loved the choreography but wasn’t emotionally moved by the story.

Agreed. It’s late, but I will say that it is nonstop dancing—even the mime is told through dance. And Catherine Hurlin was outstanding.

Catherine Hurlin has very little social media presence and I just watched her dance the lead in the world premiere of Of Love and Rage, so the old fashioned route is still working for some. I hope the number of Instagram followers doesn’t influence casting. Dancers are busy enough without having to spend their free time worrying about a perfectly curated social media presence.

I don’t want to read too much into this, but Lane is definitely coming to Costa Mesa during the Of Love and Rage run. She is teaching a class to the upper level students at the ABT Gillespie School.

I think I’d follow her Instagram even if I had no interest in ballet.

This is really hitting a lot of students hard, particularly the boys who knew him. Thanks to social media, text messaging and FaceTime, kids from all over stay in touch with other students they meet. His loss is felt far beyond his immediate ABT JKO community. It is so very sad. My thoughts are with his family and all of the people his life has touched.