Performance-based

Performance-based

There is no doubt that the performing arts were those most impacted by COVID-19, and whose industry will most likely experience the severe long-term effects as the result of the pandemic. And yet, it also remains true that these artists (both student and professional, alike) made some of the most extraordinary adaptations of their craft in the face of such adversity.

Dancers performed a pop-up show in an LA Parking lot. A Northwestern class created an entirely remote version of Monteverdi’s Orfeo, where students not only had to record their singing but also ended up acting to their own lip sync. Even, our own VCUarts Theatre department released a YouTube premiere of QuaranTUNES: A Virtual Cabaret as the final for a spring course.

And as inspiring as these stories are, none of this ingenuity should come as a surprise. As Kate Sicchio demonstrates in her essay, A History of Performance Online, the performing arts have been a part of the history of the internet from the beginning. So while the stage is gone and the audience might be behind a screen (or inside a car!), there are still so many ways perform and connect with audiences across time and space.

Find ways for your students to move

• • Bring them back into their bodies. Incorporate meditative practice and focusing techniques into movement work. Help them develop skills that will help them channel the noise of the world around them and redirect it.

  • Create routines is going to be key. Small, structured exercises will go a long way into creating a sense of normalcy in your class. Make this simple and lighthearted when possible.

  • Help them schedule practice times. Some of your students may be on campus, some may not. It'll be important to figure out when/where students are practicing and creating a form of check-in system. They could turn in short practice videos/photos and have them keep a log. Provide the structure in terms of clear practice exercises, and vary the techniques from week to week.

  • Make them laugh. We’re living in strange times, and comedy is often our best tool for coping with this. Build as much opportunity for humor into your class as you can, even if just short improvised exercises (e.g. assign silly dances, clown faces, covers of Rick Astley, etc.)

  • I recommend reading this beautifully written piece by Hope Ginsburg - Teaching Live Art Not Live.

Find a way for them to connect to an audience.

• • Pre-Recorded Content

    • Solo

    • Back-and-Forth (Additive)

    • Software

  • Live Streaming

    • You can still deliver live performances across the Internet.

      • YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch are all free streaming services.

      • OBS is a free program that can connect a camera to a live broadcast.

    • Creating a simple website (through something like rampages or Google sites) will allow you to embed multiple streams into one page and they can be shared simultaneously.

    • Here is a resource for setting up a livestream with OBS to YouTube Live (note: this is designed for live critique, but can be adapted for any use).

  • Home as place-based practice

    • Home has inspired us with dreams and nightmares, with feelings of peace and entrapment, it might be a place of great love or great strife. Returning home (or being unable to return home) will become a big part of adjusting to the reality of our times. Create opportunities for them to explore these spaces and these feelings to help them adjust and settle into an old/new place.

      • What would it mean to create a play for your mother? Your cat? The tea pot about to go off? The neighbor next door you’ve never talked to?

      • Do you remember when you used to dance in the living room? Isn’t your room where you danced when no one was looking?

      • What does your home sound like? What songs can it inspire?

  • Collaborations across time and space

    • While the loss of meeting together at the same time in the same place is difficult, it does also open a new space for us to explore in terms of creating performance. We can choose to lean into this. We can find, fight, and force our ways to connect to another, even at a distance.

    • Robyn suggested the idea of a movement-focused exploration of home, by having students choose different spaces within the house and creating tiny dances/movements that were both inspired by the architecture and filmed in the spaces. Then assembling them all together into a performance that was “home.”