Berit Ahlgren and Helen Hatch on Dance and Live Performance During COVID-19

Helen Hatch and Berit Ahlgren have been dancing their whole lives, with much of that time spent in the Twin Cities. Ahlgren trained at Minnesota Dance Theater, was a founding member of TU Dance in St. Paul, and returned to Minneapolis in 2016, working as a dance educator, performer, and choreographer. Hatch worked with Minnesota Dance Theater from 2011 to 2017 and presently teaches at St. Paul Ballet. Her 2018 show Isotope was named a Top Ten Twin Cities Dance Performance for the year by the Star Tribune.

Berit Ahlgren, Samantha Mayhew, and Helen Hatch in bolerobolero. Ryan Sanderson

For their new show, Live @ The Shed, Hatch and Ahlgren recruited 19 other dancers who performed several pieces, including their 17-minute original production bolerobolero, based on the orchestral piece Boléro by Maurice Ravel. Perhaps the most notable element of this performance was its venue: live, outdoors, at The Shed outside The Lab Taproom in St. Paul, making it one of the most distinctive live, outdoor performances since the pandemic began. I talked with the veteran dancers and choreographers—both of whom have also started their own companies, HoneyWorks and HATCH Dance, respectively, since 2018—about the challenges of maintaining safety in a live venue, surviving as full-time artists during the pandemic, and the future of local live performance.

Ryan Sanderson (TCG): I think the biggest question everyone has about returning to any sort of live performance is whether it’s safe. So first, what steps did you take to ensure safety for everyone at the show? 

Helen Hatch: Absolutely! It’s our biggest question too! Once we had our venue secured, we started putting together a document with all the recommended protocols for outdoor gatherings from Stay Safe MN, which we started planning and implementing right away. Some things were obvious—things we’ve become used to at this point: requiring reservations and capping the audience below 25 percent of the venue’s capacity, social distancing and making sure seating was at least six feet apart, the requirement of masks, and temperature checks. 

But we also had to consider how the audience moves in and out of the space, ensure we had enough volunteers to help with the flow of people, and require all members of the audience to sign waivers, which was all very new. Since this was one of the first dance events since the pandemic, we wanted to make every effort for it to be successful, and show people live performance can be done.

Volunteer taking temperatures at Live @ The Shed. Ryan Sanderson

TCG: Is this a viable model for other companies to follow? What advice would you have for people looking for ways to return to live, in-person performances? 

Berit Ahlgren: I think it is! Yes, there are new and different limitations, but if you let your mind run with strange and unique possibilities, it’s quite likely there is something there worth advancing on! People do want to see live performance, and audiences will take your lead if you offer them something safe and trustworthy. I know winter is coming, but I’m already dreaming up ways to perform outside through the season. The risks of a society without artistic consumption for that long scares me. If live theater, dance, or music can’t safely happen for audiences indoors, my goodness, we must find a way to offer the community ways to enjoy the arts in other ways.

TCG: What have the last six months been like for running independent dance companies? 

Hatch: Well, both of us had shows scheduled last March that were cancelled really last minute. There’s always this slow build in producing work. And to have all that work not make it to the stage was really hard. But I think just the uncertainty of the times is the biggest challenge for me. Dance performances have to be planned out so far in advance. It’s impossible to plan right now.

Ahlgren: It’s been discouraging. Functionally, like Helen said, you just can’t plan. My 2020 was pretty full with freelance projects that had been scheduled out since early 2019. To have lost everything that was on the calendar, as well as jump through hoops with unemployment insurance and feel completely non-essential, was damaging to my drive. I stopped everything for a while to assess if this is the right field for me now.

Audience watches bolerobolero at Live @ The Shed. Ryan Sanderson

TCG: Aside from safety, what other major hurdles were involved in putting together a show right now? 

Ahlgren: Hurdles? Everything? We started with a $0 budget and simply asked the dancers if they would be okay with waiting to see what we got in donations, from which they’d be paid for their time. I have never worked this way—there’s always been a contract with a set stipend that each artist is ensured, even if not until the end of the project. But there were no other options unless either Helen or I had a generous benefactor to support the project up front, and we believed in our vision too much to let that stop us from the start. The fact that over 20 dancers agreed to create this with us without an assured compensation really blows my mind.

Hatch:  From the very beginning, we did this project completely backwards. We had no show date or venue even! No presenter, no money. But we just knew we needed to create something, and we knew lots of dancers in the community felt similarly. We had artists from the beginning, which I am still completely humbled by. These dancers are incredible. Just incredible. And in terms of all the red tape (literally), I’m still in disbelief that we pulled it off. At the beginning, there were just so many reasons to not do it. But that’s sort of how it always is. It’s much easier to do nothing. It’s much safer to do nothing.

Twenty-one dancers enter stage for bolerobolero. Ryan Sanderson

TCG: This is a big question, but you have both been in dance a long time, all around the world. You run your own companies and intimately understand the challenges small theater companies face, even under the best circumstances, much less right now. What changes have you seen? What will be different about local, live performance beyond this present moment? 

Ahlgren: Oof. Yeah. I got excited about the options to take dance classes from instructors around the globe the second I knew it was a possibility! And they were great classes, but there was also something missing, and that was a familiar face, and someone knowing my name. Like the show Cheers! I missed supporting people I knew and feeling a community effort to stay afloat while times are rocky. I shifted to taking classes by local teachers and built an online calendar as a place for dancers to look for daily training from people working here. I anticipate maintaining a career based in the Twin Cities, and the giving and receiving of support on a local level can’t stop just because the ways we’re familiar with working have changed.

Hatch: I think people within our communities are more supportive than ever. We are all seeing what life is like without live performance, and by it being taken away, its necessity has been revealed. I know I am going to be making every effort to see as much as I can, as soon as folks are showing work again. I am optimistic that this time of isolation can actually bring us closer in the end. 

Audience watches bolerobolero at Live @ The Shed. Ryan Sanderson

TCG: What are you working on next? 

Ahlgren: My collaboration with Nathan Keepers (of The Moving Company). Give Ear is set to premiere March 19–20, 2021, at The Cowles Center, as a postponement from March (2020). Aside from restaging that, I’ll be working with Helen in her production with Darrius Strong, and continuing to tour and perform with Ashwini Ramaswamy’s Let the Crows Come. I’ll be presenting work at Mathew Janczewski’s Candy Box Festival at The Southern Theater in April, and a section from my 2019 piece At Least, At Last will be performed in Detroit in May for Kristi Faulkner’s Women’s Work series.

Hatch: Right now, Darrius Strong and I are revamping part of our work, H Y B R I D, for a filming The Cowles Center is producing for their annual gala. And then later, me and Darrius will be getting all our dancers back together to gear up for our full show March 5–6, postponed almost a full year. Basically everything that was scheduled from March 2020 onward has been rescheduled for next year. It’s like a weird time warp. But I am grateful that the opportunities that were supposed to happen last year are being honored in 2021.

You can find Berit Ahgren at beritahlgren.com as well as on Facebook and Instagram. Helen Hatch and HATCH Dance can be found at helenhatch.wixsite.com/hatchdance as well as on Facebook and Instagram.