Română
I salute you body, I salute you mind,
This letter caught me at a very strange time. M-am gândit mult la ce aș putea să împărtășesc cu tine și nu găsesc prea multe lucruri luminoase. So I’m going to write to you honestly, about my experience during this period, maybe you’ll find yourself in it too.
I don’t know about you, but the pandemic has affected me tremendously. I was at the moment when all the work I had done until that moment was coming together like a puzzle and opening new and new doors for me. I looked eagerly and courageously at the plans I had and felt that if I continued to work, the results would be better and better. A simple and unbreakable logic that seemed to work until everything stopped. I found myself so vulnerable all of a sudden and unable to accept the situation I was in.
At first I couldn’t dance at all. Nu puteam să asociez sufrageria cu un loc potrivit pentru dans. I was in my house, where it’s nice and warm and friendly, but I couldn’t move a finger. I felt stuck, tied down like I never knew how to move. I could find no reason for it. Nothing excited me. I was upset about everything I missed. Unable to focus on a single task.
I felt like I didn’t deserve something like this to happen to me. The information that surrounded me was unreliable, always contradicting itself. I didn’t know what to believe anymore. The feeling of “I don’t know what to believe anymore” is scary. I no longer knew where the dance started or where it should start. I couldn’t make sense anymore, and moving him online sent me into a second wave of rage. We don’t understand how people can still create, adapt and dance. What moves them? Desperation, hunger, denial, or the sincere desire for expression? Then I found names for what I was feeling. It was a sensation I had experienced before with the same intensity. Mourning. And I decided to treat it as such. I’m still there, can’t say I’m over it. Any beginning with apparent potential has a slightly bitter aftertaste that reminds me of the instability of the situation. All kinds of questions arose.
What and to whom is dance useful? Who needs artists anymore? Am I an artist? Should I fight for my pleasure or give up?
In the meantime, I danced some more and I felt a hunger subside that I didn’t realize at first and that came from somewhere else, not from my stomach.
How are you?
I salute you body, I salute you mind.
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 #8 was created by Bogdan Crivoi 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
