‘Like Coming Back To Life’: Tulsa Ballet Rehearsing For New Season, Return To Stage

Tulsa Ballet is rehearsing for its new season with some changes because of the pandemic. The company said the current season is keeping everyone on their toes. 

"We were coming off probably the worst period in our art form in a century,” said Marcello Angelini, Artistic Director. 

Angelini said things are looking better compared to this time last year, but there’s still a lot of uncertainty.   

"Ballet is our passion. Ballet takes a lot of love and lots of passion,” said dancer Arman Zazyan. 

"For us, it fits our souls. Like this is what we love to do. Without being on stage, you're taking a part of me,” said dancer Madalina Stoica. 

Getting to perform during the pandemic at all was music to these dancers' ears.     

"Stage is a miracle place to be,” said Zazyan. 

"Being back in the theatres, hearing the claps of the audience, it's like you're coming back to life," said Stoica. 

The Tulsa Ballet reached double its ticket sales goal for its 2021-2022 season opener three weeks ago.  

But Artistic Director Marcello Angelini said the budget is also more than 10% lower than in years past. He also said subscriptions are about a quarter lower than the pre-pandemic numbers.  

"We are trying to understand if this is the new normal or it is just one of the phases that we are going through,” Angelini said. “Every four weeks a new train leaves the station. Every four weeks things change dramatically from the four weeks prior to that." 

Angelini said luckily, they've received every government grant available to them. 

To help limit COVID-19 exposure, the company is offering socially distanced performances on Thursday nights. Angelini expects other performances to reach upwards of 60% capacity. 

Tulsa Ballet also said it's the first American Ballet Company to be fully vaccinated.  

"It's quite wonderful because at least we started again. We're working together in the same studio. We are working mask-less,” said Angelini. 

In 2020, dancers were either stuck rehearsing from home or spread out between four studios, masked, and couldn’t see each other outside the building.  

“Choreographers could not come in. They were choreographing works from their homes, their living rooms, their bedrooms, in Amsterdam, in Boston, in Rome, in London or wherever because they couldn't travel. They couldn't come in,” said Angelini. 

"We were looking at our emails waiting to see if tomorrow we could go to work or not,” Stoica said. "We had to do shorter pieces because it was hard to breathe. It was hard to connect with your partners, with people on stage, with the audience.”  

The dancers said they’re leaps and bounds above where they were this time last year.  

"It made us stronger," said Zazyan. 

"The noise, sometimes, is louder than the music and the pandemic really quieted the noise and we started missing the music and now that we are back in the studio making dance, making music again with our bodies. That joy is the primary driver of everything that we do,” said Angelini. 

For a list of performances this season, click here.