dance

This Is Where We Dance Now: Symposium Report

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Photo by Elena Benthaus, used with permission. Design by Regina Harlig.

My biggest project pursued under Audiences and Online Reception: Before and After COVID is the issue of The International Journal of Screendance I am guest-editing with OSU alum (2019) and now Assistant Clinical Professor at University of Maryland, Alexandra Harlig, which is forthcoming in May/June https://screendancejournal.org/. We decided to open a space for our contributors to share their work and hosted a symposium on March 12-13 and 19-20 in conjunction with the special issue. We additionally organized some roundtable events on specific topics of interest: TikTok and Short-form Screendance, The Future of Screendance, and Screendance Festivals and Online Audiences. We tweeted under #WhereWeDanceNow and all of the symposium events were recorded and can be viewed online on the symposium website: https://u.osu.edu/thisiswherewedancenow/

The symposium marked what for many of us was a one-year anniversary of living with COVID, quarantines, and lockdowns as part of our new reality. When I proposed the special issue, I was slightly concerned that the pandemic was going to turn out to be a short blip, and that the issue would not feel relevant when it came out. I could not foresee the magnitude of the pandemic, and that the reason for our convening over those two weekends in March would be to grapple with what it means to make and practice dance onscreen in the midst of a virus that, at that point, had claimed over 2.5 million lives globally—a number that has increased to 3.25 as I write this in May 2021.

As with the journal special issue, the symposium considered the impact of COVID on the field of dance—where, how, why, and under what conditions we dance, now, when all dance is screendance. The symposium was on Zoom at no cost to presenters or attendees, and we were blown away by the response: nearly 300 registrants from around the world for the symposium’s 7 events (3 roundtables, 3 paper panels, and a conversation with the IJSD editorial board). As a global community, it is difficult for the screendance field to gather in person, and the burden to travel usually falls to those in the global south. We hope that this symposium was the first of many more to come, and that the new possibilities and infrastructures that arose to support the pivots necessitated by the pandemic will enable us to continue to sustain a globally expanded vision of dance onscreen.

Dancing through the Pandemic, Jewishly

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Theatrical dance artists’ work conditions changed overnight when COVID-19 shuttered theaters and canceled tours. These changes affect how audiences access and understand dance. My work in Audiences and Online Reception: Before and After COVID focuses on Jewish and Israeli choreographers’ experiences of COVID-19: how lockdowns during the pandemic affected and continue to affect reception to their work; how they maintain mobility online or in other ways when they are stuck in place or their movement is otherwise restricted; and what they foresee and hope for the future.

The research I pursue with this grant supports my current book project on Jewish choreographers who circulated between the Americas and the Middle East through migrations, dance touring, and intercultural collaborations between the 1950s and the 2020s. Central to my project are Jewish choreographers in cultural minorities and Jewish interracial, intercultural, and LGBTQ+ contexts in concert dance. I examine how the reception to these choreographers’ work in print newspaper reviews and online determined how audiences understood them. I show how Jewish choreographers’ work from diverse backgrounds engenders what I call “kinesthetic peoplehood,” a transnational phenomenon wherein people feel connected to or estranged from a diasporic community through bodily practices. Divergent reception to these artists’ work across national contexts, particularly in COVID-19 shifts from the theater to the screen and re-conceptions about how audiences can come together around dance performances, generates transnational narratives stratifying the Jewish diaspora.

I am excited to welcome dance artists for online events during the 2020–2021 academic year. These events are open to the Ohio State community and to the general public. The artists will share some of their work and talk with students and community members about what it has been like to be a working artist during the coronavirus pandemic. First up is Alon Karniel, who will give a Feldenkrais Method® master class on November 2 and discuss his experiences working in Israel during the pandemic. Stay tuned for details on this and other upcoming events!

This Is Where We Dance Now

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This image shows a Zoom dance class.

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!!!!