Română
Dear moving body,
I’ll start by describing what I’m experiencing right now. I look out through a rather narrow opening in a tent and feel the wind howling and moving the walls around me. I see the pines bending under the weight of the huge cones and feel the cold wind coming into the tent and I like it, even though I’m cold. I’m thinking about dancing. I’ve been thinking a lot about dance lately and my place in it. And it’s very easy for me to think of him when the walls around me are moving when the cold air is blowing in, and when I see a beautiful picture in a small opening, which is not near me.
I’m really worried about the dance, or myself in it. It is very easy for me to metaphorize and observe around me the insecurity I feel inside. You ask me if I’m worried about the future of art, and I answer you, however, that art and dance will find ways to continue even if it requires fundamental paradigm shifts. I can’t advise on what should be done to continue, although I have some ideas about it, I can say that I believe that dance as an art is a human necessity even if it is less obvious. I think about how he emerged as a community binder, as a connection to the supernatural, and as a healing force.
And then I think about how dance came into my life and how it changed along the way. To the innocent passion with which we danced at the beginning, without any goal, to the dreams that were forming. I was thinking the other day about how society urges you to “follow your dream, don’t give up no matter what, and go to nothing to achieve that goal”. I realized that although it seems like a very good thing, which gives strength and confidence, it can also be very harmful at the same time. Sunt momente în care structural te schimbi, iar a continua să urmărești un vis din copilărie sau adolescență nu este cel mai potrivit pentru cine ești acum, la momentul prezent. I think there are many people who reach the place they have long dreamed of and are not happy because it is no longer their dream, but a version of themselves from the past. I believe that as painful as it may be, it is important to open our eyes wide to our surroundings and to ourselves and recalibrate with each step. I think that happiness, the state of conscious well-being, is more important than the dream.
When I really practice dance for the joy of it and not for a distant goal like a “brilliant career” it starts to feel good and I feel it with all its complexities in every cell. No purpose, just his concreteness in pure form and nothing else. What is clear to me now is that for me the dance will be in this form, or it will not be at all. And I can only hope it will be. Maybe more among fir cones and sand dunes than in black boxes. Remains to be seen.
Dragă cititor mișcător, sper că nu te-am întristat. For me, the inner reality must be seen as it is and that gives me joy, but I know that for someone else it can feel like a burden. It is not, however. It is life and change and I enjoy its flow.
What I would like to ask you is: where is your favourite place? Are you there? Is it far from you?
I’m also curious how your relationship with dance has changed over time. How did it all begin? How is it now
With love of movement,
The 5th body
In 2021, several choreographers told and forwarded to their colleagues’ questions about the body, the pandemic and the place/meaning of dance for them, in the form of anonymous letters.
Each letter served as inspiration for an illustrator to create an augmented animation during DANSTOPIC workshops in the spring, a guided journey by Skeptic Dog Animation and Human Interface.
The animation of Letter #5 was created by Andreea Tănase and can be discovered through the Artivive application.
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.artivive
Apple Store:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/artivive/id1188737494?mt=8
