Top dance in front of the camera: During the corona crisis, Dominik Halamek's "Ballet Factory" in Wolfratshausen offers online training.
Wolfratshausen –Johanna is dancing. She tiptoes across the parquet, leaning her upper body over her flared leg to the left and to the right. Then it turns quickly around its own axis. The ballet teacher is alone in the mirrored room, but she is not dancing alone. On the screen in front of her, a few young dancers are trying to follow the steps of the teacher.
The choreographer and dancer Dominik Halamek is going through very difficult times these weeks.
© Sabine Hermsdorf-Hiss
Children's ballet is in the online training schedule of the "Ballet Factory" this morning. "It was unusual at the beginning," admits Johanna Jordan-Eisele that dance lessons via video transmission are not everyday for her. "How effective the whole thing is depends a lot on the camera setting." But the most important thing is the emotional component, "that the children get a little bit of everyday life back," says the 34-year-old ballet teacher from Dominik Halamek's team. Because his dance studio is closed due to the corona pandemic, there are courses online.
"In the beginning, the idea was to catch up with the unusual hours by going through the Pentecost and summer holidays," says the acrobat and dancer from Wolfratshausen. "But after six weeks it was a problem." That is why he and his team created the online offer: early dance education, dance gymnastics for seniors, ballet for teenagers and adults, modern dance, jazz. The highlight was an "online dance party for the whole family", which was celebrated on the occasion of the one-year studio birthday. "It was super awesome, everyone could really let off steam," says Halamek. He plans to continue the online dance courses for two weeks. Then, he hopes, life will gradually return to the orphaned studio.
The current situation affects him emotionally. “At the beginning I was incredibly sad,” says the artist, who saw everything he built up in 15 years crumbling. For fear of the unknown virus, the first events were deleted from the calendar early on. "This had dried up a large source of income." At that time he was still on tour with "Best of Musicals". "We were right in the middle of it, but whoosh, it was gone too," he recalls.
What remained was the studio that opened only a year ago. This was intended as a means of subsistence, but not in this way. "The support of the members, who continue to pay almost all of their contributions, is awesome," Halamek emphasizes. He is regularly informed that he is lucky with this by messages from colleagues who are fighting for their existence. Like an air acrobatic technician friend who is now employed by a construction company. "He has to feed two children," Halamek knows. But the image that the colleague posted on Facebook in new work clothes had shocked him. Gradually the sadness gives way to a feeling of fear, the dancer admits. "The studio is the last piece of the house of cards," says Halamek, who "because of a formal error" the first application for immediate financial aid was rejected. Despite 4800 euros fixed costs, which add up every month at his three companies. In addition to the dance studio, this includes the areas of "show design" and "show services" with a large inventory of LED costumes and equipment. “If I can't hold the costume fund, that would be a total fiasco. Now it's just like that. "
The uncertainty gnaws most of all on the mind of the sensitive artist. After he had waited in vain for a word about dance studios and theater stages in every speech by Prime Minister Markus Söder in the past few weeks, there has been a ray of hope since Tuesday. It can open again from mid-June. Whether and how this can work in its two 68 and 52 square meter dance halls now depends on the requirements. For the time being there are still live dance courses via the Internet. "Online is more fun than I thought," says Halamek, "but it's just not the same thing."
Also interesting: "Musical Moments": Halamek's rousing hands-on party in the Loisachhalle
Johanna is now dancing on screen in front of six new young ballerinas. Visibly happy. She puts the “fun factor” - on a scale of one to ten - at eight. "Looking into the eyes and laughing is missing from a ten."
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