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A small crowd gathered to dance at a distance, bringing some safety-rated joy to the neighborhood.
Instead, productions will have to find less finely tailored venues, like outdoor public spaces and hangarlike halls.
Art forms and their institutions shape each other and fade away together.
When opera and orchestral music outgrew aristocratic party rooms, they birthed specialized forms of architecture.
Amplification, arenas, and pop music all fed each others development.
Today, the whole intertwined arrangement of form and infrastructure is spectacularly vulnerable.
Staff must be paid, and big buildings cost money even when theyre dark.
(And the consequences of another dark season are dire.)
This fallow time gives opera houses and symphony halls a rare chance to tend to their facilities.
The mantra of the next few years must be smaller, quicker, cheaper.
Even big institutions are coming to grips with a reality that threatens their existence.
We may not be able to do that.
But there can be extraordinary creativity in small things.
Can you do an installation where the audience is moving around to different destinations, like a pilgrimage?
And an unforeseen bottleneck could prove disastrous, even lethal.
That series, too, looks improbable, but has some flexibility built in.
Were running multiple scenarios, some that incorporate social distancing in our concert halls, some that incorporate streaming.
Geffen says he is optimistic because everyone, from artists to technical staff, understands the need to improvise.
Now, higher education has moved to remote instruction overnight.
The arts are becoming woven into our daily lives in startling ways.
Every night at 7, New Yorkers stagean impromptu percussion concert with an orchestra of thousands.
Zoom meetings resemble the griddedTV-screen constructions of Nam June Paik.
City kids of my generation are rediscovering the peripheral-vision anti-mugging skills we were raised with.
The presence of the body in space is suddenly electrified and important.
In dance, the logistics of spacing people out can be a productive constraint.
Ive always loved the six-foot distance.
Its really beautiful and elegant, Parson says.
I had an idea for a piece with a tiny log cabin in the middle of a giant space.
Sound came from the balconies.
That work never happened, but the idea has lately been tugging at her again.
I can think of a dozen powerful experiences from the recent past that might seem suddenly timely.
But guiding an audience safely through a landscape while performers remain still could be fruitful and sublime.
But its no way to lose ourselves in some alternate, virus-free world of the imagination.
The Armorys Drill Hall is an immense place ideal for compact shows.
At the time, the project felt arch and puzzling; now it seems almost prescient.
Where do the temperature screeners stand?
Can a show be short enough for safety and still leave audiences feeling like they got their moneys worth?
The building was designed for a future we knew we couldnt predict, says artistic director Alex Poots.
Production staff are studying ways to dispose audience members around a large space.
Lighting designers are working out a flexible matrix that can be controlled from a laptop.
A row of individual portable bathrooms can be set up along one wall.
And most important, Poots is recruiting artists who can use the constraints instead of chafing against them.
Im finding that they really want to lean into the restrictions and the challenges.
We just cant work with nothing.
The performances took place outdoors, with the audience migrating through Los Angeles State Historic Park.
Negotiating the pop-up venues … can get a little tricky,wrote the critic Mark Swedin theLos Angeles Times.
There are steps to trip on in the dark.
It is easy to scrape yourself on raw lumber.
There are no amenities, no opera house coddling.
No wine bar, chocolate, coffee, or much of anything.
Im interested in giving audiences an enormous sense of freedom, Sharon says.
Many of the projects weve done have no set path for the audience to go.
But I also love the notion ofputting tape on the floorand using distance to create unexpected patterns.
The second part takes place in a larger gallery, with players spaced far apart, surrounding the audience.
This might be the moment that piece has been waiting for, Sharon says.
Colleagues will remain idle, audiences will be afraid, institutions will stumble, or even disappear.
But look at what we gain.
For now, these enthusiasms and ideas bang up against frustrating impediments.
Orchestras cant play in tune or in time if theyre spaced at six feet intervals.
Performers need each others physical presence.
They learn the dance from my body, and I need to see theirs.
The urgent need we all feel now will eventually become material.
People will be more sensitive to touch, Abraham says.
Human contact is going to play to the senses in a visceral way.
