Coronavirus and Ballet – April 2020

The international pandemic of the coronavirus has altered the landscape of the world’s ballet stages, both big and small, for the foreseeable and perhaps even not so foreseeable future. In Russia, all state theatres (Mariinsky, Bolshoi, Perm, Stanislavsky, Mikhailovsky, etc.) closed on March 17th with initial plans that the closure would be lifted in early April. The closure was extended until late April subsequently. Then, on 9 April, General Director of the Bolshoi Vladimir Urin told Kommersant that he felt a reopening in September 2020 for the fall season was “optimistic” at best. Implying that there was a good chance the state theatres’ closure would continue for the rest of this calendar year. While foreign theatres have short spring seasons (ABT and SFB both have just a few months of performances), the Russian season runs daily through late July in all theatres and starts again in September with more performances immediately. Losses at the Bolshoi per day of missed performances, amount to millions of rubles. And then of course there is the dancers’ physical health to take into consideration when they are off for half of a year or more.

Here is to hoping, that optimistically, we might see some ballet in Russia before the end of 2020. Stay healthy everyone.