Under normal circumstances the beauty of a dance film festival is far from underappreciated, but when you factor in a global pandemic, the screendance landscape changes. Dance on film quickly becomes the safest and most creative way to engage audiences while everyone is cooped up in their homes. Which means In/Motion, Loyola University Chicago’s eight-year-old international dance film festival, is more essential than ever.

I audibly gasped on Dec. 30, 2020, when the Chicago Sun-Times reported the sudden death of choreographer and street dance legend Adolfo "Shabba Doo” Quiñones in Los Angeles. He was 65 years old. That same day, Toni Basil—singer, dancer and cofounder of L.A. street dance troupe The Lockers—also posted an announcement on her Facebook page: “It is with extreme sadness the Lockers family announces the unexpected passing of our beloved Adolfo Shabba-Doo Quinones. In this difficult time we are requesting privacy.”

When you check into Zoo Motel, you’re checking out of the daily horror show that has recently transformed network news and diving into the escapist world of master creator, host and lead actor Thaddeus Phillips. “Zoo Motel”—a live, virtual theater production—is Phillips’ response to the loss of access to live theater due to the Pandemic. “Zoo Motel” premiered in October from initial venues in Los Angeles and Miami, and has been going strong since then, live streaming via Zoom from Bogota, Columbia.

I was on a lunch break. Tuning in via YouTube, I thought I’d catch up on the day’s events as the 2020 election was due to be certified by Congress, a governmental process I didn’t know existed until this year. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma was arguing his case, hoping to persuade his colleagues, without evidence, that a grand conspiracy had taken place and that our election was fraudulent. Mid-sentence, everything changed.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago kicks off its 2021 season with "The Dreamscape" on Jan. 16, a digital showcase accompanying the MCA's current exhibition, "The Long Dream" (recently extended until May). Over four hours on Zoom, "Dreamscape" audiences will choose their own experience as they navigate through livestreamed music, video art, meditative performances and intimate conversations—much of those works-in-progress. With a focus on process over product, this is for folks who are interested in accessing and observing artists' experiments during quarantine. 

Twenty twenty was hard. Like everyone else, performing artists coped with the physical and emotional toll of prolonged isolation, a summer of protests and racial reckoning, and a fraught election season. Like millions of other Americans, the pandemic has profoundly upset artists’ livelihoods. As I write this, more than 330,000 Americans have lost their lives to COVID-19.

There are four who are not counted as part of that grim total whose absence is deeply felt in Chicago dance. 

Chicago Tap Theatre’s annual “Tidings of Tap” has a whole different feel this year, partly because it comes to us streaming online for the first time (Dec. 18-20). Videographer Kevin Larson's electronic delivery is flawless, however, and watching it from the privacy of my home, I was as captivated and engaged as I had ever been seeing this delightful show live in years past.

The more significant difference for “Tidings” audiences today is in the current circumstances that shape our perception and appreciation of it, and that of life in general.