Ohio State Professor of Dance Susan Van Pelt Petry leads dancers through a Hawkins-based spiral floor sequence in April 2020. This is just one example of how studio dance practices have moved online and into our homes during the COVID era. Image used with permission.

For my work as part of Audiences and Online Reception: Before and After COVID, I am delighted to be guest editing an issue of The International Journal of Screendance with Alexandra Harlig (OSU alum, 2019).

Teaching technique on Zoom, holding online dance film festivals, DJing house parties on Instagram, streaming archival performance documentation, making TikToks—the current era of quarantine and social distancing has rapidly rewritten the playbook for dance onscreen and dance online, impacting the dance field at every level. The long-term implications of this upheaval remain to be seen, but for the moment, we are seeing the culmination of a trend that has been unfolding over the past two decades or more: now all dance is screendance.

We are very excited for this issue, which considers both dance artists that have long viewed the Internet as a primary platform for sharing their work within vibrant online communities, and others who have been forced to innovate in response to sudden and radical changes to their practices.

The International Journal of Screendance is open access, and we look forward to sharing this work in May/June 2021. We are also planning roundtables and possibly a small symposium, so stay tuned for related events!!!!