After a Trying Year, the Downtown Dance Factory Show Went On

Five-year-old Kaya Hordijk, center, and fellow KindiBallet dancers were among 321 performers in the Downtown Dance Factory recitals held this month at 3 World Trade Center. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

Downtown Dance Factory [1]’s annual recital this month was more than another delightful showcase of young talent and hard work. It was a celebration of the school’s resiliency and survival.

Faced last year with five months of remote-only teaching and a slew of families fleeing the city, DDF co-founders Melanie Zrihen and Hanne Larsen, along with their teachers, did what they could to keep kids dancing and their business kicking.

The recitals, always professionally produced spectacl [2]es, moved this year from the 913-seat Tribeca Performing Arts Center theater to a raw space, with dramatic views, on the 72nd floor of 3 World Trade Center. Audiences were limited to 80. (The shows were also live streamed.) 

Previous recitals featured 1,300 kids; this year, just 321 performed.

“So, we’re still here,” Larsen said in a phone interview, “but only just.”

Still, they say, as the pandemic is being turned around, so too is the the outlook for enrollment, with increased interest in fall classes. “Although we definitely saw a falloff in business, we’re hopeful we’ll move back in the right direction,” Zrihen said.

As soon as the city begun shutting down last March, and the school forced to halt live classes, Zrihen and Larsen pivoted quickly to remote teaching, both on Zoom and with newly created YouTube content [3]. 

“As naive as it now seems, we thought we would be shut down for two weeks and then the world would be back to normal,” Larsen said. “We thought these videos will get people through for the next two weeks.” 

But as weeks and months passed, “we were just spinning our wheels trying to figure out whether we were going to be able to reopen,” Zrihen said. “Phase one, two, three, four, we never fit into any phase properly. We were on the phone constantly. We would call 311, we would call the Covid Hotline, trying to figure out if there was a chance that dance would be able to open. Finally, around August 3rd, the dance studios could open under sports and recreation guidance.” 

Then came the scramble to create enrollment for the fall, four months later than usual.

Though the school had offered remote classes, “many families were like, my kids are already on Zoom all day at school, so I don’t want them to be on the screen even more,” Zrihen said, adding that many of the younger children dropped out while the older, more serious students stayed on.

“These kids, wherever they were, had a sense of community at a time when we all felt isolated,” Larsen said.

Downtown Dance Factory produced this video in April, 2020, a month after it had to close its studios and students began taking classes remotely.

“DDF and our dance community have been one of the only constant, positive and uplifting things that have helped me through the craziness of the past year,” 15-year-old Sadie Fraser said in a recording played before each recital show. 

Zrihen said she and Larsen are looking forward to bringing their recitals back to the Tribeca Performing Arts Center next year for the “super professional performances” they have always offered. Still, she said, this year’s unconventional venue, high above lower Manhattan, may have been the right place at the right time.

“In a way it was great that it was a different experience than in a normal year,” she said. “It just marked the craziness of the year in a way that is super memorable.”