By Paul Freundlich
What to do with a community that is defined by physical contact, at a time when physical distance is the law of the land and possibly a matter of life or death? That’s a conundrum which many communities confronted in March of 2020, but none more necessarily than Dance New England.
The giving of weight, the range of motion from boisterous to subtle, the intuitive creation of dance, have been our language for over four decades. The dancing itself might best be characterized as “free-style,” though “ecstatic” and “conscious” are often used as descriptors, and “barefoot” is a given. Contact Improv has provided a basic structure of physical mutuality; “leading and following” better defined as “direction and embellishment.” Music runs from rock to world to electronic, to folk, drumming, pop, rap, even esoteric and classical as presented by DJs and live musicians.
Words we save for meetings and for the time between dances; time which we might say is the rest of our lives. Social events—weddings, births, passages of joy and sadness—are occasions for gathering. Folks live in single-family or group houses, in neighborhoods, have jobs, participate in other communities as well. Thousands have attended our 11-day summer camp and with local dances spread around the region, we reach generations of celebrants.
DNE runs itself with an elected Board, lots of volunteer committees, a few paid staff, and an operating budget above $300,000. There’s a core of many hundreds, a cohort of whom joined in 2017 to raise $1.3 million as we bought a former Girl Scout camp, 417 wooded acres with a private small lake in western Massachusetts. Financed by investment, loans, and donations, and given meaning by work weekends, ownership of land means extending the life and relevance of our community. Already we achieved a full schedule of renters, some of whom are moving towards partnership based on shared values, including respect for ecology and stewardship of the land.
If a “Homeplace”—gatherings, workshops, retreats, a center for organizing, possible residential—at Camp Timber Trails is the future for our community, for the present we have two main challenges, both related to the novel coronavirus.
1. Even as we were scaling up, for this season our entire revenue flow from rentals is in likely suspense. Along with the rest of the country, we have to deal with that deficit. Fortunately, we self-financed, so there’s no bank standing in the wings with a hook. But who knows what the economy is going to look like in a post-corona world?
2. What about that physical bond which has defined and delighted us through the years—the freedom and wildness, exploring limits, the shift from solo to duet to groups and back again in a spiral complementing and creating the choreography of the room? What about the dancing?
Well, probably no surprise, but within a week of mandated shut-down, gifted DJs had created virtual Zoom platforms. We danced in place while enjoying our friends on the multi-faceted screens of our laptops—even hooking the picture through HDMI to large-screen TVs. Some hosts not only shared music, but left time for hanging out afterwards, talking about hopes and concerns. Virtual snacks were consumed. So much is going on that an online coordinating calendar has been created by one of our DJs, Michael Swerdloff, and another building by DJ Sarah Monette.
Of course, we miss the physical contact (though for those of us confined with our partners/spouses that’s mitigated) but this variation of community has its own curious pleasure. Perhaps if and when we get back to something that might be considered “normal,” there might even be some new learnings about what our community of DNE can be.
Paul Freundlich, with his wife, Margaret Flinter, and several other intrepid souls, convened Dance New England in 1980. Paul has served several terms in leadership, offered workshops, taken his turn on kitchen chores, and had the time of his life doing it. He is a member of the Managing Board of Camp Timber Trails, LLC, and for a decade was part of the editing/publishing collective that produced Communities.