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The days are getting longer. The sun is out. The number of vaccinated New Yorkers continues to grow every day.

And now, more than a year after the coronavirus pandemic suddenly brought down the curtain at theaters and concert halls across the city, darkening Broadway and comedy clubs alike, the performing arts are beginning to bounce back.

Like budding flowers awakening just in time for spring, music, dance, theater and comedy began a cautious return this past week as venues were allowed to reopen with limited capacity — in most cases, for the first time since March 2020.

All of which leaves arts institutions seeking to strike a delicate balance between persistent public health concerns and the desire to serve wearied New Yorkers eager for a sense of normalcy.

Reporters from The New York Times visited some of the first indoor performances, and spoke with the pioneering audience members and staff who took them in. Here is what they saw.

Isaac Alexander, 25, was walking to the Guggenheim Museum on a drizzly Wednesday evening with headphones in, dancing to the beat of Byrell the Great’s “Vogue Workout Pt. 5” and casually voguing as he passed apartment buildings on the Upper East Side.

He was on his way to support a friend in Masterz at Work Dance Family, a performance group led by Courtney ToPanga Washington, a trans-femme choreographer from the ballroom scene. Once Alexander reached the museum, he was directed into the Guggenheim’s rotunda and shown a spot to stand along its spiral ramp. Like other audience members he was masked, and was asked to leave immediately after the show as a safety measure.

“You can take any venue, put a stage in it, invite people, and you can make it a ball,” said Alexander, an artist who dances in the ballroom scene himself.

The show — a fusion of street dance, ballroom, and hip-hop — was allowed in the rotunda after the state had inspected it and given the Works & Process series a special dispensation to hold socially distanced performances there. The cast of nine, along with Washington, had spent two weeks in a quarantine bubble together in upstate New York, their housing, meals and coronavirus testing paid for while they rehearsed.

With a pounding beat in the background, the dancers moved through intricate formations, some waiting on the outskirts as solos and duets took the spotlight. There was popping and locking, pirouetting, somersaulting, duck walking (a low, bouncing walk) and cat walking (a stylized walk with popped hips and dropped shoulders) in exacting synchronicity.

Looking down from his perch, Alexander cheered the dancers on through the 30-minute work. He said that he had not seen a show since January 2020, before the pandemic shutdown. As an artist who gets ideas from watching his peers, he felt joy at the sight of a live performance.

“Now that we’re opening back up, I feel my wings coming back,” he said. “The inspiration is coming back.” JULIA JACOBS

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