SETTING ITS SITES

The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills plans to use every bit of its campus, in person and online.

BY LIBBY SLATE

THE ARTS HAVE never been limited to spaces with four walls, and Paul Crewes, artistic director of the Wallis Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, plans to use that to full advantage.

“Before we can get back into the theaters, we’re looking at the outdoors,” Crewes says. In addition to its 500-seat Bram Goldsmith Theater and 150-seat Lovelace Studio Theater, the Wallis has a terrace and sculpture garden that can double as performance spaces and a grassy courtyard used by its education department.

Two local dance companies will utilize the open spaces: Versa-Style Dance Company, which presents an interactive history of hip-hop, and Heidi Duckler Dance, whose site-specific The Chandelier had to be postponed earlier this year. For the latter, Crewes says, “the audience will follow the action outside, moving about the campus. The work ... will be taking the audience on a journey.”

Online presentations are rolling out now: They include 15 short dance films that Crewes commissioned from choreographer Jacob Jonas, whose ensemble The Company was formerly company-in-residence at the Wallis; mini-concerts by married duo violinist Vijay Gupta and composer Reena Esmail; and a digital version of the Sorting Room, a program in the Lovelace that presents a variety of performance genres.

Diavolo has been penciled in for March and Ballet Hispánico for April if in-theater performances can resume with enough seating allowed to make them economically viable.

Also on tap are concerts by violinist and artist-in-residence Daniel Hope; a Violins of Hope concert with the Delirium Musicum chamber orchestra using instruments played by Holocaust prisoners; and the world premiere of writer-star Tom Dugan’s play Tevye in New York.

The venue’s education department has classes online and will continue to use the courtyard; one short-term goal, says director of education Mark Slavkin, is to move faculty and some participants back into the classroom.

Grow @ The Wallis programs that have gone online include the Miracle Project for people with autism, and that of the Wallis Studio Ensemble, early-career actors who produced Fairyland Foibles, an eight-episode interactive show on YouTube.

“There’s a bit of improvisation going on,” Slavkin says, “and there’s still the unknown. What will be the mix of in-person and online? What will the comfort level be?

“But doing the online classes makes me feel that we’re making a difference and helping people,” he adds. “That is a good day.”

VERSA-STYLE DANCE COMPANY PRESENTS AN INTERACTIVE HISTORY OF HIP-HOP AT THE WALLIS.