If more sedentary living hasn’t gotten you down yet, isolation and disconnect from support groups has almost certainly taken its toll on your mental health. When it feels like your eyeballs are about to jump out of your head, you’ve refreshed every social media app on your phone twice, you’ve already taken an Instagram Live dance class and Zoomed a dozen Zooms, how can you connect with loved ones without going online?
Aurora's Paramount Theatre is connecting to audiences near and far in the absence of live performance during the COVID-19 quarantine. Every Saturday night for the last five weeks, thousands of people tuned in to Paramount’s social feeds to watch the “Connection Social Media Concerts.” With themes that change weekly, musicians, poets and dancers submit original work inspired by these complicated times. Amber Mak, the theater’s new works development director, is the multitalented mind and big heart behind the online performances.
In keeping the spirit of Chicago Dance Month alive during quarantine and as See Chicago Dance focuses on dancer health this May, I talked with dance/movement therapists and artists versed in kinesthetic practices to break down dance/movement therapy for those who need it, to provide resources for those struggling to meet basic needs and to outline basic coping strategies to get artists and arts administrators across the city through the day-to-day of living in quarantine.
With the pandemic cancelling what would have been Momenta’s third annual Inclusive Dance Festival—originally scheduled April 25 as an all-day event—the company’s integrated dance program, EveryBody Can Dance (EBCD), is going virtual.
This is the sixteenth monthly column I’ve written for See Chicago Dance. In the opening paragraphs, I typically offer some cheap metaphor about the weather or time of year we’re in. On particularly busy months for dance, I try to convey my giddy anticipation about how many nights I’d be spending at the theater, and aim to implore you, the readers, to join me in experiencing dance, live and in person.
On Wednesday, March 11, I went to an evening rehearsal for a peer’s piece that was to be performed at the American College Dance Association (ACDA) that weekend. I’m not sure whether we were hopeful or simply in denial at that point, but we gathered in our electric-green-walled studio at Loyola University and rehearsed a piece about “lollipop moments” – moments that change your life for the better.
As winter winds to a close, it becomes easy to get stuck in the daily grind. Shower, shot of coffee, work, dinner, sleep, repeat. As the days get longer and our coats get a little less fluffy, why not use that extra little jolt of springtime energy to see dance? Our city is bursting at the seams with opportunities to experience performances of all kinds this month, as we ramp up toward Chicago Dance Month in April.
Here are a few of the things I’m excited about.