Covid-19 has impacted our world like no other. It has shut businesses down, kept people out of school, made thousands lose their jobs, and most of all, kept people from doing things that they LOVE to do. The arts world in America has been hit pretty hard, just like everything else. Reported back in May of 2020, Americans for the Arts stated that two-thirds of the nation’s creative artists were unemployed. We are now in October of 2020 with who knows how many artists out of jobs. Not only are these people out of their jobs, but their livelihoods were somewhat taken away. No dancing, singing, acting, teaching… you name it. No entertainment for the public either. This pandemic has affected both the consumer and producer sides of the arts.
Let’s talk about Broadway first. Broadway is a huge industry – a $1.8-billion industry to be exact – that plays a major part of our country’s artistic expressiveness. People from all over come to see big-name Broadway shows. Because shows are shown in theaters that are, for the most part, decades old, the industry was put on hold since people obviously cannot be close to one another inside. As of October 9th, Broadway will not reopen until May 30th, 2021. That will mean that Broadway will have been shut down for about a year and 2 months when it reopens. There have been no shows on Broadway since mid-March, meaning no money rolling in. The 2018-2019 Broadway season made $1.758 billion. 2019-2020 stats haven’t been released yet… but we all know the number is nowhere to last season. Now just think about how many artists have been out of a job for this long period of time or have been laid off. Yes, there is always an option to get other jobs, but this is their life – what all their training and hard work led up to. And we can’t forget all of those who work behind the scenes: directors, choreographers, costume makers, stage managers, sound technicians, theater managers…. the list is endless with one hundred plus jobs that deal with Broadway shows. Luckily, there is a thing called the Actor’s Fund, which serves the needs of entertainment workers (2). It received fifteen thousand requests for aid in only the first three months of the pandemic. As of the end of August, the fund has distributed around $13 million. But, there is still worry about the financial impact on this industry since it is most likely one of the last things to come back. While Broadway has been shut down for months now, some positive things have come out of it. BLM protests have inspired calls for change in the arts. There are newly formed collective such as Black Theater United and We See You. These have demanded active measures to counter structural racism onstage and off (2). Broadway shows have also been able to be streamed online. Shows like Hamilton, Cats, and Kinky Boots have been able to be watched from home for free.
Now I’m going to get into something that is near and dear to my heart – dance. This includes dance studios, dance competitions, dance conventions, etc. The dance world has suffered a ton during the pandemic. It’s hard to figure out if and when it is safe to do anything regarding dance because typically, dancing is done inside a studio, theater, ballroom, etc. It’s also difficult because of things like partnerwork and lifts. I know these things because I teach dance. My studio had to make tough decisions regarding what to do and so did studios across the
country. On March 12th, right before our first competition of the season, things started going haywire. The competition was cancelled and from there I knew the rest of the season wasn’t going to happen. The students’ dances were just now sitting on the backburner because they had nowhere to perform. I remember feeling so heartbroken for them because they spend all year working on their dances and get so excited for the season when it comes. It was the right thing for all the competitions to shut down because of how close people are at the venues that they take place. It’s hard to get each person to stand six feet apart. We had to make the decision to shut down the studio for what we thought was a week or two… and that ended up being months. Us teachers had to start teaching on Zoom not only because of the money matter, but because we knew our students needed it. Let me just say that it is really hard to teach on Zoom, at least for me. Some people couldn’t stay because of financial purposes and some people were able to. A small business fund named Here to Stay NC was started and we joined the fund, as a certain percentage of shirts sold by this fund went to a small business of your choice. Even with this, there had been talk of us closing permanently, and there were many studios that actually had to. Luckily enough we are still open today. Our kids have to wear masks to come and dance. They have to stand in squares that are taped off for distance measures. We can’t really touch while dancing. There are so many protocols to follow, and it makes it hard as a dance studio, but we do follow them. I’m just happy that I can even come in and teach dance to my students, and I’m happy that they want to come learn. We’ve been telling our students to think of the good things that have come out of this time, such as getting to spend more time with family and spend time doing hobbies they love doing. For me, it’s given me time to think about new ways to teach my students and I’ve been inspired choreographically by watching many hours of dancing on Youtube. We’re still anxiously waiting for competition season to come around again, in hopes that we will be able to go. There is still a great deal of uncertainty in the dance world when it comes to Covid-19, but we are doing our best.
There are many other artistic outlets that I haven’t even mentioned that are also struggling during this time. The arts world seems to be forgotten about a lot because many people just see it as entertainment, but artists see it as their life. 76% of artists have reported that their artistic practice has been used to raise morale, create community cohesion, or lighten the Covid-19 experience of the community (1). These people are still willing to use their talent to give their community some happiness for free. That’s just what artists do, they love to show their love of whatever art they do. We are all wading through uncharted waters right now, but I believe that the arts will get through this together and come out with new ideas and be optimistic of the future.