Joan Myers Brown’s company of dancers were midway through a European tour when the pandemic struck.
“It was a 15-city tour but after the fifth performance, I knew we had to get home before the borders closed,” Myers Brown said. “But I still had to pay the dancers for the whole tour.”
The coronavirus-related economic impact on the arts community has been life altering.
For Myers Brown, founder and artistic advisor of the Philadelphia Dance Company (PhilaDanco!), it meant keeping performers on the payroll (the dancers are paid a yearly salary), while adapting to a new norm of pirouettes gone virtual.