Jen Blackwell is Creative Founder and Director of DanceSyndrome. David Darcy is a dance artist with DanceSyndrome who collaborated with Jen for Is There Anybody Out There.
Jen and David’s project
Jen and David sought responses from the DanceSyndrome collective, exploring how their existing connections were changing and evolving during lockdown and beyond. Part of their aim with Is There Anybody Out There was to examine the social relationships that we depend on to maintain our communities and our mental health: how have these been cultivated or lost throughout this recent and ongoing period of isolation?
Responding creatively to the constraints that many have shared during this time, Jen and David underscored how the home had to become a site of creative expression, and video has suddenly become the pervasive mode of communication.
Members of the DanceSyndrome collective were asked for responses in different media; movement and drawing as well as writing, and the artists experimented with ways to represent and interact with these responses, while moving through the domestic space.
Learning and Next Steps
Jen and David would usually then go on to develop a performance using local spaces and facilities. However, due to the extra restrictions that have continued in Lancashire during most of 2020 that next step wasn’t possible this time. As a result, the research and work done as part of Is There Anybody Out There has remained in the domestic and digital space, mirroring the personal experiences of many. Follow the continuing work of DanceSyndrome, including online dance classes.
