Cara McDonough Photo
Robbins in her Erector Square space in February.
Tap dancer and instructor Alexis Robbins has had plenty to keep her busy during the Covid-19 pandemic — especially as the history of her chosen art form is inextracably entangled with the story of race relations and racism in the United States.
Robbins said that, without question, the most important work she can do currently is to respond to the killing of George Floyd, as well as the deaths of other Black men and women at the hands of police officers, and the systemic racism inherent in our culture.
“Right now, the arts world is really focused on injustice about Black humans in this community,” she said. “The current movement feels very visceral and united and strong, so I have been spending a lot of time thinking about what I need to say as a dance maker.” She said she’s signed every important petition she’s come across, emailed police departments and donated to local and national organizations.
And, of course, she’s focused on tap, which has a notable history — one she’s always felt compelled to share with her students and everyone else. Tap is an American dance genre created from West African musical and dance traditions. Its roots reach back to slavery — and to racist minstrel shows of the 1800s.
“As a tap dancer performing a Black art form, it’s important to me that people know we cannot be celebrating this art form without celebrating Black culture, and we cannot be celebrating Black culture without empathizing with Black people,” Robbins said. “I get to put tap shoes on every day because Black people created this art form.”
She has always included information and videos that highlight Black dancers in the emailed newsletters she sends to students. Now, the message seems more urgent than ever.
“Even if you say, ‘I just do this for fun or exercise,’ I think you still need to be aware of where it came from,” Robbins said of those who decide to take dance classes. “I think if you’re going to put the shoes on, you should know just the baseline of why it exists.”
Going Online
Robbins’s work as a dancer, instructor, and educator continues even as the Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically altered the landscape around her, as it has for so many other artists. In mid-March, as Connecticut quickly shut down, Robbins — a performer, as well as the founder and artistic director of kamrDANCE, a New Haven-based collective that focuses on tap, percussive movement and contemporary dance — watched as the cancellations rolled in. She had a full roster of classes and rehearsals, and three shows scheduled for the end of March alone, including “Are You or Do You?” a 24-minute tap and contemporary work at the Yale Cabaret Satellite Festival. She had plans to perform a piece with her sister, Sarah Robbins — a vocalist and poet — at the Providence Dance Festival in April, and at MIXTAPE, another dance festival in Atlanta, in May.
More imminently, she was supposed to head to New York City that Sunday, March 15, for a rehearsal. She and her collaborators had worked on their performances for weeks upon weeks — as dancers often do — and it seemed improbable that a then-mysterious pandemic could shut it all down.
“I was like, ‘Hey, I’m having rehearsal,’” Robbins remembered thinking. “I was still not aware of the gravity of the virus. I had a few days of me being in my own bubble and thinking that we work really hard on these things, and all the shows weren’t even cancelled yet. And then of course within a week or so my whole life was cancelled.”
The shock factor was significant, but for Robbins — who teaches at the Hartford Dance Collective, Neighborhood Music School, and independently at a space she rents in Erector Square — the rebound was quick. She was teaching online by Monday, March 16.
“It was online that day and has been since that day,” she said. “There was no pause in my schedule.” She’s been able to utilize the space she rents in Erector Square to conduct some of classes (safely and solo), which affords her a proper dance space and hard floor for tapping, important for someone who lives in a carpeted apartment, which Robbins does.
Since then, keeping up with teaching gigs has kept her busy, as have new opportunities made possible by the pandemic and online technology.
“What’s beautiful about technology is I’ve now been connected to people who are very far away,” said Robbins. Her pandemic teaching gigs have included teaching a class for the Montana Dance Center and for the Zoetic Dance Ensemble in Atlanta. She’s participated and taught in workshops across the country, open to a wide range of participants logging in from their own homes.
Robbins and Satellite Festival collaborator Luiza Karnas also made a film project based on the work they were supposed to perform, which was shared by the festival in an online platform. And she and her sister shared a version of the duet they were supposed to perform in Providence and Atlanta, “Everything Is Taken Care Of,” for the New York-based FEAST Performance Series’ SNACKTIME series — an online performance platform developed in quarantine — in May via the organization’s Facebook live feed.
It’s been, surprisingly, a heady, productive time, as dancers and other artists look for innovative ways to create and connect at a distance.
The Unknown Ahead
Educating people about the history of her art form, Robbins said, will clearly continue in the next phase of her career as a dancer and teacher — whatever the next phase looks like, considering the ongoing virus and associated restrictions. For now, that remains an unknown.
“What’s next?” she asked. In terms of creating something new, she said, “I feel like I need to be physically in a space with my collaborators.”
In terms of choreographing on her own, she said she just isn’t feeling it in quarantine, not yet anyway: “I can’t make myself do it. It’s taking away all of the fun and creativity.”
But gigs and her ongoing lessons have filled a creative need, as well as — more pragmatically — a financial one.
“Money, at first, was really stressful,” said Robbins, who noted that as a freelancer, her cash flow comes from a number of sources, including the smaller but reliable payments for her individual classes and bigger payments from performances that might cover expenses for an entire month.
The loss of work due to Covid-19 includes performances that she had spent countless hours rehearsing for and now aren’t happening, period (nor is the associated paycheck). When the shutdown hit, she suffered those disappointments, but also noted another set of losses: payments she could have expected from gigs that hadn’t materialized yet. That’s been the reality for many freelancers, she said.
“I started realizing the random things I wasn’t hired for yet that I would have been if life were normal. I’m losing out on all that,” she said.
Robbins decided not to file for unemployment after hearing about complications with the system, and for now, counts herself lucky due to ongoing online classes and other sources of aid, including $500 from the Creative Sector Relief Fund through the Greater New Haven Arts Council.
Her tap classes are paid for on a sliding scale. Some students, she said, truly can’t afford payment, but others are paying more than the requested donation. A few have made sizable, tax deductible donations through her fiscal sponsor, for which she said she is truly grateful. She’s used some of those donations to pay her performance collaborators what they would have been paid for planned performances.
And, like so many, she’s working with a lighter expenditures budget at home, saving money on gas, eating out and other expenses that aren’t currently happening regularly.
She misses in-person dance, and might — considering the new regulations — offer in-person, outside dance classes (six feet apart and with masks) in July and August, although that’s not yet set in stone. She also hopes to spend some time later this summer relaxing and safely visiting family.
No one knows when dance will look “normal” again. Robbins hopes, though, when it does, to produce and perform more work here in New Haven.
For now, she’s dancing every day, working on her improvisational practice and concentrating on issues of social justice and anti-racism in the dance sphere and beyond.
“I think when artists — dancers in particular, who need to be breathing hard and talking — I think when we are allowed to do that again, there’s going to be a lot to say,” she said.