During quarantine, many artists searched for new outlets of expression. In joining Zoetic Dance Ensemble, I’ve recently contributed to the Distance Disco blog. Here are some of my posts below.
To read more posts… https://distancediscoproject.com/
7/28
Every time someone asks me how I am dealing with the pandemic and social distancing, I feel two different, cloudy emotions. In one sense, I’m just sad. I was 8 months into living in New York City, navigating my life as a freelance artist and recent graduate. Being a new artist in NYC is quite the learning process, but I was finally starting to feel like I was getting somewhere. I was meeting people, getting some chances to perform, and finding dancers and teachers that I loved. Social distancing required dance in NYC to shut down and took away all my jobs, leaving me to head home to Georgia with my parents. It took me out of the amazing dance communities and experiences that I was so excited to find.
This leads to the other emotion. Returning to my family, to my home. The social distancing in my normal, “professional” life led to closening in my family. I’ve spent more time with my family and my home than I have in a long time. It is wonderful to come back, to spend pure time with my family. We have spent time in nature, spent time talking and creating.
So I guess social distancing has been more of a recalibration for me, taking a break, reconnecting, creating, asking questions, and attempting to find some comfort in feeling lost.
8/14
When we learned about the pandemic and our need to stay home, the dance world responded fast and with fervor. Missing dance and knowing that I needed to stay in touch with my body, I started looking through the many many offerings of virtual dance classes from all across the country. I felt so overwhelmed and also somehow pressured. I wanted to dance, but the idea of watching class on my laptop screen in my basement felt unappealing. However, I found a few great classes that I was really happy taking and I leaned into those experiences, but I still felt bad about not taking more classes. There were all these opportunities to take virtual classes from incredible artists, and I wasn’t taking them. It caused an unexpected shame. It made me question my identity as a dancer. Am I really a dancer if I’m not taking up all these opportunities? Do I not love dance or want to be successful in it? I know that my mental health during the quarantine made me feel these things, but it’s hard to ignore those constant worries and questioning. Now enter the opportunity to dance with Zoetic, a dance company that I loved and felt aligned with me so well. One silver lining of the pandemic brought me the opportunity to work with Zoetic. It is an odd experience to be joining a company virtually, but I could not be more thankful for this outlet. I have an amazing group of people to dance with, to share this experience with. It will be harder to dance in this way. I do hate learning dance from video. It will be weird dancing alone in my basement, but I think all that hard stuff will be overshadowed by the excitement and happiness of getting to dance with these wonderful people.
Kelsey Kempner 