C2 Y THE NEW YORK TIMES, TUESDAY, JULY 28, 2020
The conductor and pianist Daniel Baren-
boim, who played an all-Beethoven concert,
declared in the Spanish press that the festi-
val, one of the first to take place this summer,
had been “un milagro,” a miracle.
“I’m in a cloud of emotions,” Joaquin De
Luz, who has been the director of the Com-
pañía Nacional since September, said via
WhatsApp the morning after the show.
“We’re moving forward, carefully, respect-
fully and without fear.”
For the occasion, Mr. De Luz, returned to
the stage with Jerome Robbins’s meditative
solo “A Suite of Dances.” In 2018, the piece
had been on Mr. De Luz’s farewell program
at New York City Ballet, where he danced for
15 years. After the long lockdown, he said, “I
felt I wanted to be with my dancers.”
Still, it was strange performing after
months of limited activity. “There were so
many things to adjust to all at once,” Kayoko
Everhart, a dancer with the company for 16
years, said after the show via WhatsApp.
“The slightly raked stage, the stage lights,
the varying tempos of the live music. It’s
been a while.”
Just a few months ago, these perform-
ances were unthinkable. Spain, among the
hardest-hit countries in Europe, declared a
state of emergency in mid-March. More than
250,000 people were infected and over
28,000 died before the state of emergency
was lifted on June 22.
During that time, the dancers received a
square of vinyl flooring so they could safely
rehearse at home, and the company pro-
vided daily classes on Zoom. The dancers
also received their full salary, thanks to state
funding. Such stable backing contrasts with
the United States, where dance companies,
large and small, are struggling to stay sol-
vent until they can return to the stage.
But like dancers everywhere, members of
Compañía Nacional, which is based in Ma-
drid, found that the novelty of dancing in
their kitchens, surrounded by pets and chil-
dren, wore off quickly. “As the days went on,
it started to feel harder to find that motiva-
tion,” Ms. Everhart said. “I decided to focus
on the things I really didn’t want to lose, like
my abdominal strength and glutes and ankle
strength.”
Mr. De Luz started dreaming up plans for
a return to the studio in mid-April, when he
began hearing reports that soccer teams
might soon be allowed to start training: “In
Spain, fútbol is always first in line,” he said.
Lionel Messi and his teammates on Bar-
celona were back in practice by early May.
By the second week of May, Mr. De Luz
and Marisol Pérez García, the Compañía Na-
cional’s executive director, had put together
a detailed safety protocol for the company,
taking into account the guidance of health
authorities and addressing the specific
needs of dancers: daily class, rehearsals,
changing rooms, partnering and, eventually,
performance.
On June 1, as the country observed a 10-
day period of mourning for the victims of the
coronavirus, the dancers returned to their
studios near the Matadero, Madrid’s old
slaughterhouse, now an arts center.
The safety measures were intense. Masks
were worn in all areas except the dance stu-
dio — and even inside the studio, whenever
rehearsals brought the dancers within six
feet of one another. Ballet classes were di-
vided into groups of 14, so dancers could
stand well apart at the barre in the compa-
ny’s two large, high-ceilinged, well-venti-
lated studios. All personal effects had to be
kept in cloth bags, carried by the dancers.
“It was all a bit daunting,” Ms. Everhart
said. “It seemed like there were 100 small
rules, dos and don’ts.” But over time, it be-
came routine: “You know, take off the mask.
Clean your hands. Use tongs to pick up an-
other mask.” The hardest thing, she said,
was not being allowed to use the showers at
the end of the work day.
For weeks, the dancers didn’t touch. They
rehearsed everything except the partner-
ing.
The turning point came in mid-July when
all 52 company dancers were tested and re-
ceived a clean bill of health. With that, they
were given the go-ahead to touch unmasked,
making partnering possible again. “It was-
n’t until my first pas de deux rehearsal that I
realized I had missed that aspect of my job
so much,” Ms. Everhart said.
On July 20, even as cases of coronavirus
were increasing, particularly in northern
Spain, the dancers traveled by bus to Gra-
nada, in the southern region of Andalusia.
Onboard, everyone wore a mask. It was a
sweltering, 105-degree day, so hot that the
bus overheated. They had to let it cool down
before completing the trip.
At the performance, almost all of the 800
available seats at the theater in the Jardines
del Generalife, a Moorish garden with ex-
pansive views over the Alhambra and the
rest of the city, were occupied. During the
day, it had been brutally hot, but by the time
of the performance, the temperature had
cooled, enough that the stage was a little
slippery from condensation, Mr. De Luz
said. (Nothing the dancers couldn’t handle.)
The festival’s director, Mr. Moral, said that
about 90 percent of the reduced seats had
been sold during the festival, which he took
as a vindication of his decision to go forward
with the festival. Mr. De Luz agreed: “As far
as we know, performances have not been a
source of infections.”
And the Granada festival is not alone. Eu-
rope is cautiously reopening: Salzburg is
holding a reduced festival, and the Arena di
Verona will have a series of opera concerts.
Mr. De Luz said he had received numer-
ous inquiries from American dancers, in-
cluding his former City Ballet colleagues,
desperately seeking performance opportu-
nities. For them it has been a dispiriting
summer, as one dance festival after another
canceled live performances.
Compañía Nacional de Danza has plans to
perform the same program again on
Wednesday, as part of Veranos de la Villa, an
outdoor festival in Madrid. Mr. De Luz has
ambitious plans for the fall, too, including an
indoor performance at the Teatro Real in
Madrid in November, and a new version of
“Giselle,” with the action moved to 19th-cen-
tury Spain, for December.
Of course, uncertainty is built into any
plans in the time of Covid-19. “Nobody
knows what the situation might be in Sep-
tember,” Mr. De Luz said. “But I feel really
privileged that we were able to be onstage,
especially knowing what dancers elsewhere
are going through.”Top, dancers with the Compañía Nacional de
Danza backstage last week before a festival
in Granada, Spain. Above, the company’s
dancers in the gardens of the Alhambra
complex. Right, seating for the Granada
festival was capped at 50 percent of capacity.PHOTOGRAPHS BY LAURA LEON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESMoving Ahead Safely in Granada
CONTINUED FROM PAGE C1
‘It was all a bit daunting. It seemed like there were 100 small rules, dos and don’ts.’
KAYOKO EVERHART
A DANCER WITH THE COMPAÑÍA NACIONAL DE DANZA, SPEAKING ABOUT SAFETY PROTOCOLSAbove, Joaquin De Luz, the company’s
director, testing the stage before the festival
last week. Right, Giada Rossi and
Alessandro Riga during a performance.