Danceletter 15

Hi everyone,

It’s been… a while. I hope that wherever you are in the world, this finds you safe and healthy and feeling supported by friends / family / community during this time. Toward the end of last year, I started to feel like my Danceletter experiment had run its course. I never could have anticipated where we would be now. As a freelance writer, I’m used to spending a lot of time alone. But this is… different. And in the absence of my usual social activity and routines (to the extent that they existed), I think it’s important to seek out other forms of human (if not in-person) connection. So: Danceletter is back.

While many people are losing their jobs, I feel fortunate to still have income (at least for now) from teaching and freelance writing, and I want to do what I can to support those who might be in more precarious situations, especially in the arts. I’ve always wanted Danceletter to be free, and it still is, for the most part. However, you now also have the option of throwing in a little $, if you have some to spare, for a monthly or yearly subscription. All money will go toward grassroots artist relief efforts, including the NYC Low-Income Artist + Freelancer Relief Fund (started by Shawn Escarciga and Nadia Tykulsker) and the NYC Dancers Relief Fund (COVID-19) (started by J. Bouey and Melanie Greene of the Dance Union podcast). You can also, of course, give directly to those funds if you wish!

I plan to publish about once a week, as long as this quarantine situation lasts. Most letters will continue to be public, but there will be occasional subscriber-only missives (of what kind, exactly, TBD). To sign up for a paid subscription ($5/month or $30/year), click the “subscribe now” button below. And, as always, feel free to share Danceletter far and wide.

The past week has been wild for me, emotionally and psychologically, as I’m sure it’s been for many of you. So I thought I’d share a few things that, so far, have made socially distanced life a bit calmer and more grounded, both dance-related and not.

1) Sitting on my stoop, phoneless. I’ve pretty much ceased going out, except for groceries, and am really grateful at this moment for a front stoop to sit on. I’ve found that this activity is best enjoyed without my phone, just taking in the fresh air and looking at neighborhood life: kids on their skateboards; an elderly neighbor going out for his regular walks; delivery guys (the new heroes, or newly recognized as such) biking by. Yesterday I watched a woman across the street working out in the little gated area in front of her apartment, with a trainer. It was hard to tell if the trainer lived in the building or was just visiting. (They kept a safe distance from each other.)

2) Quarantunes by Morgan Bassichis. Social media can get really overwhelming; I’m learning that I have to be strict about limiting my intake under these new conditions. But it is good for some things right now, including the impromptu songs, or “quarantunes,” that performer Morgan Bassichis has been posting on Instagram. There are tunes “for those who are having trouble with goals” and “those who are having trouble with nighttime” and “those who are having trouble with conflict” (and more). Whether or not you’re having trouble with those things, they help.

3) Meditation with familiar faces. Instagram has also been good, paradoxically, for guiding me toward meditation. In the past few days I’ve gone through phases of, to put it mildly, really freaking out. And I actually think that’s warranted given what’s going on. But I know that this is not a sustainable frame of mind. In my anxiety-induced scrolling, I learned that Tess Dworman was leading evening meditations over Zoom, and found out about Michelle Boulé’s Meditate-Move-Heal online workshop. Both have helped bring me back to myself, and in the absence of going to shows (a ritual that, in its absence, I feel increasingly grateful for), it’s nice to see familiar faces/names gathering virtually. You can check out Michelle’s Instagram for future workshops; to be added to Tess’s mailing list for meditation, email tess.marguerite@gmail.com.

4) Cunningham warmup. A lot of people are offering dance classes online. I’ve tried a few and had varying experiences (maybe I’ll share those another time), but I am unequivocally on board with doing Cunningham technique in my living room. (Again, comfort in the familiar.) Yesterday Jennifer Goggans led a 40-minute warmup on @mercetrust’s Instagram; she’ll be back today at 1pm (Eastern time), and she tells me more is in the works.

5) Reminders that it’s okay to slow down. In the avalanche of reading material on the coronavirus, I’ve been especially moved by two ruminations on our relationship to work and productivity. On her blog InfiniteBody, Eva Yaa Asantewaa reminds us that it’s okay to pause: “It's okay to take a look around and realize you don't know what to do next. You just don't know what to do.” And in Jewish Currents, editor-in-chief Arielle Angel writes about her instinct, in this moment, not to carry on as normal: “If this crisis presents an opportunity to admit to ourselves how thoroughly we’ve been colonized by capitalism, how utterly it has overtaken our inner lives, then at some point, we have to find ways to expel it, to allow for the slowing of production.”

This epidemic is asking us to retreat, in the obvious physical ways, but maybe also in the sense of tending to those inner lives with greater care, if we can. While I want (and need) to maintain some sense of normalcy in a crisis like this, my intuition also tells me not to carry on like normal. What will that look like?

Thank you for being here. And again, if you want to support relief efforts for artists (and receive some occasional ~subscriber-only content~), click “subscribe now” below.

Until next time,

SB