The pandemic may not have hit any creative class harder than dancers. Not only are they barred from performing to a live audience, but social distancing rules means they can’t even practice or collaborate with their fellow company members. Despite these limitations, one of the country’s leading companies, American Ballet Theatre, has found an innovative way to keep their dancers creatively stimulated during this unprecedented period, even if it’s over Zoom.
The project, dubbed Pas de Deux (which roughly translates to “dance for two” in French), brings four ABT dancers together virtually with a diverse group of other creatives, including singer Alicia Keys, chef Marcus Samuelsson, artist and technologist Kat Sullivan, and painter and sculptor Chloe Wise. The artists’ collaborations were then filmed for a docuseries in partnership with Chanel that premieres today on ABT’s YouTube channel and their IGTV. Pas de Deux, which was produced by Little Monster Films and Chai Vasarhelyi with ABT and Chanel, was created by ABT soloist Gabe Stone Shayer as he mulled ways he could still be creative while in quarantine. “I wanted to highlight the innovation that is magnified by an artist feeling stifled,” Stone Shayer said. “I’m obsessed with multimedia collaborations and felt this was the moment where we could explore the intersection of art and artists.”
Stone Shayer’s own collaboration was with Grammy Award winner Alicia Keys. He choreographed an original solo dance to Keys’s song “Love Looks Better,” which was inspired both by Keys’s New York roots and their shared experience of being Black in the predominantly white world of classical dance and music. “The energy between music and dance is forever…they are the closest of siblings,” Keys says in the video. “They’re just so powerful together; when you put a melody and a rhythm with movement, it’s like there’s no soul that you can’t touch because it’s all of the senses.” While both artists admit to feeling unmoored at the start of quarantine, they have now channeled that restless energy into new projects like Pas de Deux. “I’m excited by the way you can dream up things that maybe you wouldn’t have before,” Keys said.
Another pairing that perhaps wouldn’t have coalesced but for the pandemic was ABT principal dancer Isabella Boylston and lauded chef Marcus Samuelsson. Stone Shayer paired the two partially because they share Swedish heritage: Boylston’s mother and Samuelsson both grew up in the country. “I had been a fan of his for a while, so it was a good pick on Gabe’s part to put us together,” Boylston tells AD. In the video, Samuelsson creates a dish inspired by Boylston’s Swedish heritage and childhood in Sun Valley, Idaho, and in return, Boylston teaches the chef a few steps to the famed ballet Swan Lake. “It’s so important for creatives in different disciplines to talk with each other during the pandemic, sharing how we have all had to adapt,” Samuelsson tells AD. “Because we’re all facing this incredible moment in time and learning how to metabolize and make something meaningful from this challenge. Artists get that in their bones.”
The final two pairings include ABT principal Cassandra Trenary with Kat Sullivan, the artist in residence at RLAB, a virtual and augmented reality lab; and ABT soloist Luciana Paris with visual artist Chloe Wise. Trenary and Sullivan collaborated on a mixed-medium visual piece which combined video that Trenary shot of herself dancing with digital creation helmed by Sullivan. And Wise used photos and videos of Paris dancing at sunset as the inspiration for a painting “honoring this unprecedented moment in our global experience,” Wise says in the film. “We don’t have the luxury getting together, being together and being hands-on,” she adds. “That’s a true 2020 collaboration.”
