
Unbowed and undefeated, classical musicians and dancers are getting creative from home and providing all of us with some stunning performances. Technology has allowed artists from across the spectrum to give the public pleasure despite difficulties of rehearsing and working from home.
National Opera Paris put together a captivating film set to Sergei Prokofiev’s music ‘The Dance of the Knights’ from Romeo and Juliet. It's almost as fascinating for its glimpses of the artists home spaces, so varied and unusual in many cases, as for the insights into how dancers stay toned, limbering up and exercising fully wherever they can and in some of the most ingenious ways! Watch the film here.

Closer to home, Harry Christophers' enormously popular UK-based choir and period instrument orchestra, The Sixteen, have also been entertaining the public with John Sheppard's 'Libera Nos: A Virtual Performance.' Their film produced in lockdown shows singers relaxing, frequently in their most intimate home settings – in bed, in the bath. Watch it here.
They explain how Sheppard's 'title – meaning ‘deliver/free us’ – has a particular resonance and poignancy at the moment. It not only reflects our collective desire to be released back into normality but has a particular, and unexpected, relevance which becomes apparent at the end of the film.'
You spot that one of the singers is heavily pregnant. We're told that Katy was literally in the first stages of labour when she did her first video and by the time she did her second (the next day) she had given birth to a beautiful baby girl!
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