Dancing Pandemic

Between Helplessness and Discipline

Abstract

This article focuses on the term ‘movement’ regarding the unique forms and restrictions manifested in the public sphere during the Covid_19 pandemic in Israel, 2020. During this period, Israeli residents experienced extreme changes in day-to-day life due to the spread of the Covid_19 virus and the government’s restrictions on movement that followed. The changes manifested in the public sphere as a void and slowness, influencing movement patterns on a personal, social, and political level. Out of this crisis grew new daily routines, political demonstrations, and artistic reactions, especially in dance, which embodies movement in space and is exemplary of the freedom of movement. Against this backdrop, I discuss two choreographies performed in the public sphere during the pandemic in 2020: AMPHI by Omer Krieger, and About Blindness: An Intervention in Public Space by Dana Hirsch Laiser. In addition to the uniqueness of dance in the public sphere during the pandemic, bio-political aspects illuminate the Covid_19 experience from a larger human and social perspective. These creations’ choreographic imprint embodies and exemplifies the fundamental tension of the times: the power of the state over the restricted body vs. the helplessness of the human condition striving for freedom of movement.