Selling the past and the present alike: Streaming ballet for live audiences during lockdown

During the Covid-19-induced lockdown, most of the main theatres and artistic companies in Europe and North America kept on proposing ballet seasons to homebound audiences who could connect to online channels and enjoy ‘live’ a performance in streaming. At a certain point, though, what was actually streamed was not a live performance but a recording that would have been otherwise available on DVD. What type of live performance illusion was therefore proposed to these theatre audiences all over the world? Did this phenomenon mark the beginning of a new way of defining, framing and understanding a live theatre performance? These are some of the questions that this paper intends to propose about the fruition of theatre performances, and in particular of dance ones, in the pandemic era and perhaps beyond.