Lemonade is 20/20
This year, we have all been handed lemons. Symbolically, lemons are seen as bitterness and disappointment. And yes, that has been true for all of us! But, if you close your eyes, imagine cutting a lemon in half, holding it up to your nose, and taking a deep inhale, you will find the upside of a cleansing, refreshing, invigorating scent. And a glass of lemonade always sounds delicious. So what is the lemonade of your situation? Have you been able to find the right balance of sweet and sour? Has it been hard to swallow, or are you used to the taste? Has it changed the lens of your life in a beneficial way, like having more time at home or with family, and you may actually be enjoying your drink? Our lemons this year have also taught us to be nimble and adaptable, because we had no choice, and creative enough to invent a Plan B.
I had an amazing opportunity this year to set a new dance piece on students at Pasadena Community College. Choreography is what I wanted to get back to, and my card was dealt with impeccable timing. Rehearsals were going well, the students were challenged by my movement, which meant I could provide them some potential growth as dancers. Then Covid-19 hit. A sentence often used within our discussion of our lapsed Plan A ideas. After that, it was Plan B strategizing while making lemonade time. For all of us!
My grand ideas of 3 dimensional dance on a proscenium stage got downstaged into 2 dimensional zoom meetings and file sharing. I lost so much creative control as we had to resort to the students filming their own dance sequences in their own homes.
My original idea for a dance would not work this way, so I went with the flow and decided to make a “love letter” for our time in a pandemic. We can look back in ten, twenty years, mask and hand sanitizer free, and say, “oh yes, I remember that time”. So why not document it and go with what is in front of us? I mean, the last pandemic was 100 years ago so it doesn’t happen every day! Since choreography is hard enough to learn in the studio, it would be a struggle to make progress on a dance with a deadline teaching on zoom. My choreography is not meant for small spaces either. I wrote a 2 page guideline of ideas for the students to follow or inspire as a jumping board for other ideas. I encouraged improvisation, meaning, they create movement on the spot that feels good in their own bodies. And lastly, a dance phrase I already taught them when we had class. These students, some of them in their last year, had their hearts set on dancing on stage (their class entitled, Dance Performance 023), now relegated to the stage of their living rooms behind the lens of their phones. My heart went out to them as well, but they were all troopers. In turn, all these budding dance students had a good opportunity to practice adapting as artists and making the best with what resources were available in quarantine. For me, it was nice to be able to make dance while in quarantine.
I have included the final film here so I can pour you a clean glass of my lemonade. It’s not how I wanted to make it, but it doesn’t taste too bad. Please share some of yours!