How dance goes digital in Seattle

If there’s one thing that distinguishes artists, it’s an aptitude for creative problem-solving. They’ve had to be particularly creative this summer.

Six months into a pandemic that shuttered theaters, nightclubs and other venues, with no set date to reopen, Seattle area dance companies are pivoting from live performance to producing new digital content for their audiences.

This week, Pacific Northwest Ballet announced its plans for a six-program digital season. PNB’s artistic director Peter Boal says, although he held out hope the pandemic would ease its grip to allow for a normal season at McCaw Hall, he started making plans to move content online as early as June.

“I didn’t think we’d really have to do it,” he says. “But I thought I’d better just come up with it and we could play it by health and government recommendations.”

Like most performing arts organizations around the world, PNB abruptly shut down in mid-March. By early summer, the company had laid off the majority of its artistic, administrative and technical staff. But the dancers returned to the studios in early August, and following recommendations from public health experts, they’re sequestered in studios into groups of four, what Boal calls “pods.”

Those same health recommendations guided Boal’s artistic choices for PNB’s upcoming digital season. The first program features excerpts from nine separate works: solos, duets, nothing that requires more than four dancers onstage at a time. Later in the season, the company will premiere several new ballets commissioned specifically for the digital platform. The finished dances will be videotaped and streamed online.

“We have one camera that will be like the person who’s seated in row Q,” Boal says, providing an approximation of what that ticket holder might see. Two other cameras will record the dancers close up. “There can be more intimacy with faces and footwork. There’s an opportunity to find new perspectives,” he says.

PNB isn’t the first Seattle dance company to opt for an all-remote artistic season. In July, Seattle Dance Collective, helmed by two PNB company members, commissioned five choreographers to create short pieces that streamed online.

Seattle contemporary dance troupe Whim W’Him just launched a digital portal called “In-With-Whim,” featuring new dance films, interviews and other content. Company founder and artistic director Olivier Wevers likens Whim W’Him’s custom-designed web portal to Netflix; subscribers pay a $120 for the season, which allows them continuous access to material.

Wevers and Utah-based choreographer Penny Saunders created the first two offerings, released in mid-August. This was Wevers’ first foray into choreography for digital media, and he admits it was terrifying. But he believes performing artists have no choice but to adapt to the new reality.

“It’s a privilege to say ‘we have to wait because this is not how I used to do things,’” Wevers says. “We have to step out of our comfort zone. We have to figure out how to keep creating art because we have to keep going.”

The question is, even with subscription fees or other pay walls, can performing arts groups sustain themselves financially producing only digital content?

At this point, there’s no clear answer to that question.

Whim W’Him has attracted digital subscribers from around the world for new works by such choreographers as Saunders, and the internationally acclaimed Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, a Whim W’Him favorite. Plus, with only seven dancers, and a small administrative staff, the troupe has lower overhead than a large company like Pacific Northwest Ballet, with almost 40 dancers, and a crew of unionized backstage artisans.

PNB’s full digital season subscription is priced at $190; that’s close to the price of a single main-floor seat for a live McCaw Hall performance. To help plug the gap, the ballet company is soliciting donations and raising other money to sustain itself until such time as audiences are able—and willing--to return to the hall.

Artistic director Peter Boal says creating digital work is about more than the bottom line.

“I think humans need art right now,” Boal says. For him, dance can lift you up, offer perspective, or allows for a meditative moment. “It’s more important than people realize.”

PNB’s digital artistic season, “Dance Happens Everywhere,” begins in October.

Whim W’Him’s “In with Whim” digital platform is live. New films will debut in mid-September.