Dancers with The Washington Ballet returned to the stage last week for their first indoor live performance since February 2020.  

The Washington Ballet kicked off the 2021-22 season with the Opening Performance Celebration at the National Building Museum on Oct. 21 and 22. Dancers showcased their talent for their largest in-person audience since the COVID-19 pandemic forced The Washington Ballet to suspend in-person training and performances. 

Returning to stage after such a long hiatus was an emotional and fulfilling experience for Adelaide Clauss, a company dancer with The Washington Ballet, who was thrilled to perform on a stage once again.

“The whole experience was really quite magical; there is something about being on a dark stage with stage lights and an audience that is impossible to replicate,” Clauss wrote in an email to The Hoya. “It was also very gratifying to be able to do it as an entire company, and seeing all of my colleagues up onstage and creating something together with them was wonderful.”

The company had to repurpose the National Building Museum, a museum in Penn Quarter dedicated to architecture and design, into a performance space that could accommodate the company, according to Catherine Eby, the artistic operations manager at The Washington Ballet. 

“One of the things that’s so interesting about our first performance being at the National Building Museum is it’s not a traditional theater space,” Eby said in a phone interview with The Hoya. “We built the theater from scratch, we installed all of the seating, we put all of the numbers on the chairs and we did the tickets ourselves, so all of the things that you walk into a theater and you see as an audience member and as a dancer we created from the ground up.” 

According to Eby, the dancers performed a variety of ballet pieces in the Opening Performance Celebration that catered to audience members of all ages. 

“It was structured a bit like a gala performance,” Eby said. “It really covered all of the audience members’ love of ballet but also showcased our dancers and their true breadth of experiences in a new and really beautiful way.”

The 2021-22 season includes additional performances like “Swan Lake,” “Giselle” and “NEXTsteps.”

The Washington Ballet is also preparing for its performances of “The Nutcracker” this holiday season, which is a traditional audience favorite, according to Gian Carlo Perez, a company dancer with The Washington Ballet.

“We just started this week with rehearsals, and that’s really exciting because we have families coming to watch the shows every year,” Perez said in a phone interview with The Hoya. “It’s one of the special moments of the year, because you get to reconnect with that holiday spirit during Christmas.”

As a result of COVID-19 safety precautions, dancers have been practicing at home and performing virtually, so the return of in-person performances is a welcomed improvement, according to Perez.

“For the last year and a half, before we returned to the studios, we were training here in our homes and taking classes in living rooms and dining rooms, so that was really challenging,” Perez said. “When you go to stage, to a performance again, you get to be exposed in front of an audience, and you get to do what you trained all your life for again.”

The dancers and choreographers had to work hard to make sure that their performances were ready for the stage and the audience, according to Clauss.

“Even when we came back to the studios, it was still a long trajectory to actually get to the place of live performance,” Clauss wrote. “I am so grateful to the audience and our supporters for turning up and supporting us at our performances, because it has been a very long path to get back to in-person performing, and now we have finally gotten there together.”

According to Eby, the Opening Performance Celebration was a wonderful return to the stage for The Washington Ballet, both for the dancers and the audience.

“I think it was the perfect culmination of the anxiety and nerves of returning to the stage but also the absolute elation of witnessing your hard work and the appreciation from the audience,” Eby said. “It was a really beautiful outcome of all of those things together.”