During a Pandemic, When in Doubt - Stay Creative
For the next couple of weeks, Arts Commons will be posting stories to the blog, speaking to performing artists in Calgary about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their lives, and how they are continuing to create art in a time when the sharing of the performing arts in its usual form is not possible. We will examine the essential role that the arts plays in our lives, and look at what the future might hold.
You can also check out previous installments:
Performing Art in Strange Times
Performing in a Time of Performancelessness
Save Our Music
A Musician’s Pandemic Awakening
The Essential Need for Relief for Calgary Jazz Artists
“Stay productive and stay creative,” is what dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker Sabrina Naz Comănescu kept telling herself as COVID-19 sent waves through the performing arts community. That doesn’t mean that even with her optimism, she didn’t go through her own private mourning period when the Decidedly Jazz Danceworks Beautiful Noise production – a large-scale show including 10 dancers and eight jazz band members – was postponed outright just days before its premiere. Or that she didn’t feel the same sense of shock and unreality as every other arts company in Calgary cancelled or postponed their shows one after the other.
Foremost a dancer, Sabrina has never had trouble keeping busy. Entering her sixth season with Decidedly Jazz Danceworks, she has performed both as part of the Arts Commons Amplify Cabaret series, and ArtsXpeditions. Her film work has also been featured on the Broadcast Lab monitors throughout the Arts Commons building. If anyone was going to feel the impacts of the COVID-19 shutdown, it was Sabrina.
“After I got over the freak out and the crying spells finished, I took a moment to “problem solve” and the thought of a career change popped into my mind. However I gave it no vacancy because deep down inside of me there is a seed of creativity that is rooted in performance art. I feel the most alive and purposeful when I invest in it, especially when dance is the catalyst. So, with a sanguine nudge from my mother, I turned the word “problem” into projects! I decided to create a series of short films. I was able to participate in film contests that were out of New York, which I never would have been able to before people started to fill up the virtual space as they were.”
Bruk Back Together for Telepathic's One Minute Film Contest
“I feel like throughout this whole-time, media arts really came in and greatly helped the performing arts, because what is a performance if you have no eyes there to receive the work. I was very grateful for my camera, for my iPhone, to be able to put things together and share them in virtual spaces.”
P.B.M. A cinematic Lookbook.
When it came to the live performing and teaching side of Sabrina’s life, picking up the pieces looked a little different. She was able to utilize Zoom to continue to meet with her youth group (Diversity Performing Arts Club of Calgary), twice a week and do regular mental check-ins, as well as teach virtual classes at The DJD Dance Centre.
“I was going into the space but teaching to a camera.” Sabrina remembers it with a laugh, commenting on the absurdity of it. “Very awkward! But that’s okay!”
The biggest shift for Sabrina was really with the company, Decidedly Jazz Danceworks (DJD). “We were getting really close to opening night, so we were really solid with the show and the momentum was there, and all of a sudden it’s pulled out from under you,” says Sabrina. “However, it was really amazing that DJD could still take care of their dancers until our contracts were up in May.”
As much as the heartbreak of the postponement of Beautiful Noise was difficult to let go of, Sabrina applied her philosophy “stay productive and stay creative,” embarking on a new project with Carifest, Calgary’s Caribbean Carnival Festival.
“They gave me night one of the Festival to technically direct and artistically direct, so I put together a dance marathon,” says Sabrina. “All of the dance instructors that I invited are rooted in some sort of Caribbean dance genre. There were six teachers including myself, and I learned a lot during that time. All of a sudden I had to make sure that the sound and lighting, as well as the virtual space, was working smoothly. That made it really stressful, but also a really exciting time. It was another way to provide art and specifically performing arts to the public.”
As we move into a very different fall season for the performing arts, Sabrina hasn’t lost sight of her optimist outlook. “I’m a firm believer that art will always be here, and art will always find a way. It’s up to us as the artists, as the vessels, to find that way.”
