Inside the Lines: A Letter to Pandemic-era Dancers
Dear Ones,
You’ve been dancing inside 10x10 squares, boxed in by tape marks on the studio floors. You knew you’d have to start back slowly—to attend with great care to yourselves, and to re-enter your dance rituals safely in light of such physical-mental-emotional-spiritual disruption. Even when you found time, space, and motivation to dance consistently, it’s just felt different since March. You danced at home for many months, with the walls too close and the ever-present sting of isolation. You endured.
So when you started dancing in the studio again, your joy was apparent. You could dance with other people. You could take inspiration from and find motivation in your community. I’ve been so moved to witness the love you express for what you do—a love that’s been renewed as you face an existential threat to your art form, and to you as artists.
You’re trying, valiantly, to find a sweeping, boundless feeling in your bodies without actually traveling beyond your square; without feeling the air as you pass through it; without the endorphin rush of flying, of being suspended aloft on nothing but your own strength and power. You’re reconciling the contradictions; doing your best despite the discomfort. Pressing into the imaginary walls of that box you’re in, even though you want nothing more than to free yourselves.
I’m sensing you’re nearing the end of your honeymoon. Now, after nearly two months, the limitation has become the norm—as it is in our lives outside the studio—and I can see your frustration beginning to surface. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be, but it’s what we have to do. (There’s anger to acknowledge here. I know it well. I feel it too.)
You’ve built yourselves back to a kind of physicality that feels somehow close to normal. You’re dancing fully, with commitment, tenacity, and curiosity. You’re taking autonomy and using your voices. You’re insisting on finding expression through movement. You are glorious to watch.
And yet I know you miss the expanse. I can see it in your spirits; in your artists’ hearts. I can feel your frustration. So, here are some questions for you to consider, both as dancers in the studio and as people in the world, now:
Where do you feel restriction? How might you soften into those places, whether they’re physical, emotional, psychological, spatial, etc.?
How can you reach as far into the depths of your interiors as you wish you could move into the space around you?
Who do you become, artistically, in the face of limitation?
How have your values changed—your sense of purpose? What is important to you now that might not have been before? What do you find yourself focusing on, or drawn to?
How have the last six months shaped you? Who are you in your art form, now? Who are you in your body?
Indulge me with this final thought: most dance techniques and forms are built on restriction. There are rules we follow, limitations to which we willingly submit as “training” and “study.” We repeat those restrictions until we feel at home in them, and it becomes our life’s work to figure out how to use those limitations to an expressive end. Finding freedom and agency through restriction is what dancers do best. You can do this. You already know how.
With love and admiration, always,
JZ