Ballet Northwest uses film to bring its spring ballet back to the Washington Center

Though the dancers will be on film, not on stage, ballet is back at The Washington Center for the Performing Arts this Mother’s Day weekend.

Ballet Northwest’s “Sleeping Beauty,” filmed at the center last month, screens Saturday and Sunday, May 8 and 9. The screenings are the first open-to-the-public events at the center since COVID-19 paused performances; the theater reopened last month with a LaVon Hardison concert for donors only.

“We’re thrilled to welcome people back into the theater again.” said Jill Barnes, the center’s executive director. “For the concert, we had just over 100 people, but it felt larger than that. They were very vocal and responsive. You could tell everyone was really appreciating the opportunity to be back in the theater.”

Audience members wore masks, of course, and seating was in groups of two or four people from the same household, with a 6-foot distance between groups. “It all went really smoothly,” Barnes said.

Like Hardison’s concert — and like several of the center’s other upcoming events — “Sleeping Beauty” will be available online for those who aren’t ready to return to the theater.

In “Sleeping Beauty,” the dancers are masked whenever more than one is on stage, but otherwise, the film looks and feels a lot like one of Ballet Northwest’s traditional spring productions.

“It was really important to us to create art during this time when so many organizations are on hiatus,” said Ken Johnson, who directs Ballet Northwest with his wife, Josie Johnson. “And it was really important to do this for the dancers. We wanted to create as much of a normal experience as possible.”

Filmed by Olympia filmmaker Jeff Barehand, “Beauty” features a cast of 75 dancers dressed in elaborate costumes and performing in front of full sets. “It’s a beautiful production,” Johnson told The Olympian. “The set is really stunning with stained glass windows and a big castle scene.”

Many of the familiar dances were adapted to accommodate physical distancing and restrictions on how many dancers could be on stage at once.

“We had to make so many updates and changes,” Johnson said. “When you see the whole film, you don’t even notice a lot of those things because it’s so seamless and the dancers are so talented at filling things out and using the whole stage. It was really fun to see them rise to the occasion with these new restrictions.”

There are new dances, too, including a dance by the Three Billy Goats Gruff and the Troll that showcases four male dancers in the third act, when fairy-tale characters come to the wedding of Princess Aurora.

The production was filmed over two days, with some scenes filmed out of order to minimize the time each dancer would spend in the space.

“It was an accelerated and concentrated timeline,” Johnson said. “I’m really proud of our dancers.”

Ballet Northwest’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’

• What: Ballet Northwest’s spring ballet is going on in the form of a film, shot at The Washington Center for the Performing Arts.
• When: 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday, May 8, and Sunday, May 9
• Where: The Washington Center for the Performing Arts, 512 Washington St. SE, Olympia
• Tickets: $20, with most seats sold in pairs
• More information: http://balletnorthwest.org, https://www.washingtoncenter.org
• Watch at home: You can stream the film during the same times as the in-person screenings. Tickets are $30 per household.

This story was originally published May 6, 2021 at 5:45 AM.