SINGAPORE – Dance might look easy on a stage, but that is because dancers work hard at it. Audiences will get a look at the challenges of dancing in New York-based dance company Monica Bill Barnes & Company’s The Running Show.

The work is part of the Esplanade’s da:ns focus series, themed EveryBody, and is on at the Singtel Waterfront Theatre at Esplanade on April 20 and 21. Workshops will be conducted by other dance studios from April 6 to 21.

The Running Show examines the life of a dancer from an athlete’s point of view, borrowing the style of sports broadcasts to make contemporary dance. Show writer and the company’s co-leader Robbie Saenz de Viteri, 42, narrates proceedings in a live commentary and adjusts his scripting to accommodate the stories of different dancers in different cities.

Some of these dancers are found via auditions, and the Singapore show too will incorporate home-grown dancers.  About 15 dancers aged 18 to 26 are usually cast from these auditions. The deadline for audition applications here has been extended to April 10, 11.59pm, and further information can be found at str.sg/ebEU.

The youngest and eldest dancers are cast separately with help from the presenters.

Over a Zoom call from San Diego, United States, de Viteri says: “There’s a desire to create a show that feels like a documentary and the only way is to work with real people who are going through these same questions of where their place in dance is.”

Audiences will get to see the immense dedication and training required to make dance look effortless, and the ways in which the industry slowly pushes dancers out as they begin to age. Hence, the show makes it a point to cast older dancers, with the age range topping out at more than 70.

Choreographer and company founder Monica Bill Barnes, 51, says in the same Zoom call that dancers are a dedicated bunch. She adds: “When I first moved to New York, I saw a dance show in this really old theatre, and in the middle of a beautiful quartet, the ceiling collapsed. The dancers just kept dancing with pieces of ceiling on them until the stage manager told them to stop. At that moment, I realised I would have done that too.”

In San Diego, where Barnes and de Viteri are now rehearsing, their oldest dancer recently turned 80. However, casting an older dancer remains a challenge in every new city.

Barnes says: “Where younger dancers are fearless, older dancers struggle with questions of whether they want to dance any more or if people want them in the space.”

There are different challenges to working with older dancers too, as bodies age and physicality changes. Barnes says: “During the duet I have with the older dancer, we’re holding hands or my hand is on their shoulder so that I’m able to understand what’s happening with weight and balance.”

For The Running Show’s Asia debut, de Viteri is localising references. He is intrigued by the National Physical Fitness Award (Napfa) test that primary and secondary students have to participate in.

He says: “It’s funny to realise as we’re putting the show together that so much of it is clearly from our very American point of view and a very Western perspective of what it means to dance. It’s exciting to think about undoing some of that internally and understand what it means to pursue dance in different cultures.”

Book it/The Running Show

Where: Singtel Waterfront Theatre at Esplanade, 8 Raffles Avenue
When: April 20, 8pm, and April 21, 3pm
Admission: From $25
Info: str.sg/kTfg