The Show Must Go On
After the pandemic tested morale , skill sets and bottom lines , local performing arts artists return to the stage in time for the holidays .
In a dark rehearsal room on Hope Street , choreographer Yury Yanowsky evokes snow . Some eighteen Festival Ballet dancers summon the properties of snowflakes tossed on currents of winter air to close act one of the Nutcracker Suite . It is only the first week of rehearsal , and the corps already looks impossibly beautiful , swirling and leaping around each other , arms and hands undulating fluidly from the humerus to the radius to the distal phalanges , as though they have no bones at all .
Yanowsky , clad in black , appraises his blocking and shoots a look at Director Kathleen Breen Combes , seated downstage . “ What do you think , boss ?” he asks , smiling . “ It works ,” she says , pointing a finger leftward . “ But I think that one angle ’ s funny .”
When Tchaikovsky ’ s Nutcracker Suite debuted in 1892 , it bombed . Today , the two-act ballet is a beloved holiday staple for North American dance companies . Neither Tchaikovsky ’ s rich score , nor the classic story of a young girl ’ s dreamland adventures with a nutcracker-turned-dashing-prince , changes but the choreography is as individual as the company performing it . This December , Festival
ILLUSTRATION : MATT CASTIGLIEGO .
Ballet unveils a fresh production with all-new sets , costumes and choreography . And , on this day with two months to go , there is a rising but cautious optimism that the company will perform it indoors to a maybe-full house . This prospect of normalcy feels fresh , too .
“ I don ’ t know how it ’ s going to go ,” says Breen Combes . “ When we put [ Nutcracker ] tickets on sale , they exploded . Ten days later , the Delta variant came out and our ticket sales came to a slamming halt , but now we ’ re seeing them ticking back up , as people ’ s confidence is coming back .”
December 2020 will be remembered as the year that live performers demonstrated their understanding of that old theater saw : “ The show must go on .” Like other professionals who work in close proximity to others , the arts community embarked on a mad scramble to do something they ’ ve always done in a way they had never done . This holiday , some of the state ’ s largest and most well-known cultural institutions — Festival Ballet , Island Moving Company in Newport , the Gamm Theatre in Warwick , Trinity Repertory Company , the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chorus of Westerly — are back to business . >>
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