It’s difficult to be a dancer in a pandemic. Suddenly the core aspects that make up what should be one of the simplest freedoms became severely restricted. Staggered breathing, shared sweat, connected hands. There’s something intoxicating about dancing, and nothing else can really match it. Pressed close against a stranger/lover/friend; it’s a pulse that never stops, a constant tapping of my foot and shiver down my spine when a familiar count underlies a background song at a party. I’ve always had some sort of dancing in my life – from ballet and contemporary to Irish, ballroom & Latin American, and lockdown has been the longest I’ve ever been without it. Being locked down with one square metre for space has felt incredibly constraining, for both my body and my personality.

These pictures are from an audition for the UCL dance competition team which usually travels all over the UK, a team where we later went on to practice our entire competition group piece separately over Zoom, live from our bedrooms. Looking back, it was actually hilarious how hard we tried to put the piece together over the video; I routinely crashed into my sink, the dance instructor had to choose between seeing only my feet or only the top of me, and we attempted to stay in time while the music lagged behind. The competitions ended up being cancelled, but I’m happy for the chaos that kept me a little bit more sane!

By: Kayla