Dr Ilaria Grando returns to Artsolation with a lyrical piece on the choreographic quality of art writing and its implications in this time of lockdown. Can online platforms become modes of embodied connection? In the last month, I found myself shaping a choreography of the unspoken and the unspeakable. I wanted to write an article or rather a series of articles about dance, but I could not find the right frame, phrase, or lens.
Which choreography would serve me best at this moment? Which piece would speak of endless time, a limited space, and a universe of stories that are at the same time personal and widely shared? Dance, the art of corporeality and present interaction, at the time of COVID involves risks that are too high to take.
What was there to write about then? On the white page, I danced a pas de deux with my words and my insecurities , using the backspace as the main musical score, and the delete button as a recurring movement. Just as a dance piece, my actions on the Word document were ephemeral and physical: confined to the now; destined to vanish; reproducible and yet never the same.
To write about dance during a pandemic that forced the world in a long lockdown seemed impossible. I started by giving myself some boundaries. I decided that I was not going to be writing about a past performance, that would have meant hiding from my experience and losing my purpose. Images, momentum, and storylines clashed with my present activating an impending sense of fear.
What kind of analysis was appropriate in the Now? The advent of COVID, I believe, imposes academics to reconsider more closely their approach to research and writing.
