Backstage with The Sarasota Ballet

Four Takes on the 30^th Anniversary Season

By Sylvia Whitman
February 2021

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In the before time, when The Sarasota Ballet fantasized about celebrating its 30th anniversary, no one imagined rehearsing in masks. Or performing before cameras instead of people. Or offering ballet students a Zoom option. And yet, from a variety of perspectives, this strangest of seasons is turning out better than anyone had a right to predict in the dark days of last March, when the ballet cancelled its highly anticipated performances of Sir Frederick Ashton’s Romeo & Juliet. In other words, so far, so…remarkable.

Richard House

soloist • 2nd season

After more than eight years with The Australian Ballet, Richard House was itching for a change. “I was looking into certain repertoire that companies did. I always enjoyed [George] Balanchine and American choreography, but I was torn between that and English choreographers, like [Sir Kenneth] MacMillan and Ashton. I came across The Sarasota Ballet; I realized that they basically do all of that, all at the same time.” His reaction: “Wow.” 

The audition window had just closed, however. But as House read the 2018-2019 season announcement, he couldn’t turn away. “So, I sent [director] Iain Webb a message: Would you possibly be open for me doing a light audition and I’ll just fly to Sarasota?”

Webb said yes, so House jetted halfway across the world and showed off his skills for four days. Webb said yes again, so House hopped on another plane back to Melbourne to close down his old life. “I had to go straight into performances of Giselle in Australia.” After one of the matinees, “I went in and resigned and said, ‘I have to take this position overseas.’” 

“It was all a bit of a whirlwind,” House concedes. “A bit impulsive, but it just felt right.” 

Enter the coronavirus in 2020. Webb’s selections for the fall digital programs allowed dancers to practice in small bubbles. But everyone wears masks in class and rehearsals—to the amazement of House’s unmasked mates back in Australia. “We just get on with it. We just do it,” House has told them. “It’s funny—it almost makes you stronger because you’re so much more conscious of breathing. It was a learning curve at the start, but to make this happen as a company, we’ve all had to do it.” Masked in person beats online from your kitchen any day, House says. 

Safety protocols do present challenges, “especially when you’re partnering. When you are lifting the girl, sometimes your mask will get in the way, or it’ll be knocked off. Or sometimes, you’ll go into a lift and it’s so strenuous and you just want to take a big gasp of air, and all of a sudden you inhale a mask.” 

House adds, “If I’ve taken anything from this year, it’s to find the silver lining. At least we’re dancing.” In the fall, he performed Balanchine, including a snippet of The Four Temperaments. House’s family had planned to fly to Florida to watch him perform in the 30th anniversary season—nix that. But they watched the video. “It’s a really nice thing that the arts can still give to people who are quarantining at home or scared to go out.  As much as we’re missing the live audience, it’s been so exciting to see how we’re connected.”

Ellen Overstreet

principal • 9th season

Ellen Overstreet joined The Sarasota Ballet at 19, after an open audition. She signed the contract and moved from Houston to Sarasota within days. “I honestly didn’t know much about Sarasota. The appreciation and knowledge that our audience has for the arts is mind blowing.”

In the past decade she’s ascended the ladder—from corps to coryphée to junior principal to principal. “It’s kind of wild to think about how much I looked up to the principals when I got here and now being one of them—it’s a surreal feeling. This company has really given me my career.”

Like House, Overstreet has huffed in her mask through cardio-intense (jumping) sequences of choreography. But she’s found her silver lining in performance. “When we are all in our costumes and everyone’s in their makeup and without masks, everyone just looks so beautiful. 

“Richard and I had a funny moment: We were doing a pas de deux, and we were on either side of the stage, and we just had to walk slowly toward each other. And we almost couldn’t keep a straight face. It was the most bizarre thing to see each other’s lips and mouth.”

Overstreet has missed the live audience. But videography has meant “when we did a solo or a pas de deux”—like her October balcony scene from Romeo & Juliet—”we had our time to film them on stage; it was kind of under our control. If we made a mistake, we could go back and fix it.” 

For the second half of the 30th anniversary season, Webb has chosen longer works. “It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out,” Overstreet says. “Less nitpicky little repeats and more, we need to get a nice, full first-time filming. That’ll take extra focus and extra awareness of each other. It’s going to be more of a team effort.”

Kate Honea

Principal & Assistant Ballet Mistress • 18th Season

Kate Honea and The Sarasota Ballet grew up together. She attended the company’s ballet school before continuing her training at the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School. She returned in 2002 and by 2009 had been promoted to principal. “Certainly, after this quarantine, I felt a little older than usual, but what I love about this company is all the young dancers here and all the rest we do. It forces me to stay young because I have to be in such great shape.”

In the fall, Honea danced in cat ears and tail in Ashton’s La Chatte Métamorphosée en Femme and in a full, swirling skirt in Balanchine’s Tarantella. Rehearsing in protective equipment—that’s something dancers get used to, “like pointe shoes for the women; it’s something that’s always going to be painful, always going to be hard.” But dancers “always have that strength, that drive to push through. And because we are lucky to have this opportunity, we’re all willing to do that. The support of Iain and Maggie and the whole team and the company is so helpful. That’s what makes us want to push through those tough times where you just want to take that mask off and step on it.”

She agrees with Overstreet that filming sharpens focus. “You really want to make sure that you do the first take the best, or else you’re going to have to go back, which I recently had to do with Nutcracker; I had to film a couple of times, to get the perfect one. There is a little bit more pressure; you put it on yourself because this is going out on film, and they have a record of it.”

But nothing compares to a “having the audience there, their energy. We feed off of that. You never really know what’s going to happen because it’s a live performance. You just have to go out there and live in the moment.”

Iain Webb

Director • 14th Season

All dancers learn to think on their feet, which comes in handy when you’re directing a company during a pandemic. With the March 2020 cancelations and lockdown, The Sarasota Ballet committed to the well-being of its dancers and supporters. It’s easy to forget the many unknowns behind the decision to go digital in the fall and establish a new normal. 

In rehearsals for the program pilot, Honea and two other ballerinas wore masks—and gloves. With a laugh, dancers discovered one recipe for cosmetic disaster: masks over makeup. Now the routine excludes gloves, and masks come off just before the last rehearsal. “Everyone has to feel safe and comfortable,” says Webb. “I got a really sweet email from one of the young dancers that said, ‘I feel totally happy to hold hands with my fellow colleagues.’” 

Webb credits this trying experience with making The Sarasota Ballet stronger. Now the dancers “are really caring about each other; they’re really looking and making sure they’re safe wearing masks, doing social distancing outside of the studio. They’re not only looking after themselves, but they’re looking after their colleagues and the organization.” The staff, from finance to marketing, has done the same, Webb says. “Everybody has worked so well together; we’re one of the few organizations that are back on this scale, working.”

As vaccines roll out this spring, Webb hopes to stage some live performances, letting in small groups, perhaps 50 people at a time. But “we have to take that day by day,” says Webb. “Health and safety are foremost in every decision we make.”

For now, the winter/spring programs remain digital.  The anniversary season will culminate in May with Ashton’s classical Birthday Offering and Twila Tharp’s modern Nine Sinatra Songs. Originally written for The Royal Ballet’s silver jubilee, Birthday Offering inspired elaborate costumes, now under lockdown. “So, we’re actually having a complete set made, which we will own.” They’ll make dancers “look and feel beautiful,” says Webb, and become part of the fabric of the company.

Ensemble

Whether it comes during the 30th anniversary season or shortly thereafter, containment of the pandemic is top of everyone’s wish list. First, House says, he’s throwing out all his masks. “And I’m going to hug my friends. I’m going to kiss them, love them, hug them, all that kind of stuff.” Overstreet and Honea second the hugs, lots of hugs, group hugs.

“Guys, the first thing we’re going to do is have the biggest dancer-staff party there’s ever been,” promises Webb. “And then the next thing will be to do that with our amazing audience.”

For more information about The Sarasota Ballet’s Digital Winter-Spring season, visit www.sarasotaballet.org/events/type/all/all.