BAM Is Back(?)

Covid marked a real inflection point for performing art nonprofits. Without the ability to perform to live audiences, they struggled to keep their doors open and to pay their artists. There was significant turnover among the managerial ranks. And even when various lockdown orders were lifted and people got comfortable in crowds again, the sector has bounced back slowly, if at all.

Case in point: the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Last I had heard, it was struggling with layoffs and reduced audiences.

Now, a confession: I’ve never been to BAM, even when I lived in New York. The closest I came was in 2003, when Merce Cunningham celebrated his 50th anniversary with a dance concert featuring live music by Radiohead and Sigur Ros. Cunningham was one of my wife’s favorite choreographers, and the piece seemed intriguing. At this point, I don’t remember if we didn’t go because tickets went quickly, because we had other plans, because it was all the way out somewhere in Brooklyn, or because we were both still students, with the cash flow constraints being students entails.

So this morning I saw a New York Times piece about BAM’s upcoming season. Its Next Wave Festival this year will be larger than the last couple years (though not quite as extensive as it was pre-Covid). Its interim artistic director has become its artistic director. And it looks like it’s in a stronger position than it was.

Is this indicative that performing arts nonprofits in general are getting back to where they were? Probably not. BAM is unique in many ways. But with luck, it’s at least a signal that some of the clouds are starting to lift.

Samuel D. Brunson

Photo by Ajay Suresh from New York, NY, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons