LIFE IN LOCKDOWN: FRIDAY.
Life in Lockdown is a blog series initiated by Greenwich Dance which features community and professional artists close to the organisation sharing how they are staying creative during these isolating times.
John Darvell – Director, Choreographer, Educationalist and Community Dance Practitioner
FRIDAY.
Whoopy-e-doo. A serendipity Friday!
After all a week of filming/editing, Zooms, video meetings and outdoor teaching it’s a bit of a relief to be in the safety of my previous life. That 15 years existence I inhabited as a civil servant being graphic designer, report drafter and admin wizard. Kate Bush (simply has to be Hounds Of Love onwards) is keeping me company as well as the hounds at my feet.
I have a collection of ‘To Do’ lists on the go – post-it notes, notebook, the app on my computer – which I fickle mindedly jump from one to another. I always dreamt of having that pristine paper notebook so beautifully kept with all your deep inner thoughts, but sadly, my handwriting is atrocious.
I hope readers you can empathise when I say that we spend too much time in our own heads and worlds that we often don’t realise what impact our work is really making. Then by some unseen force, you get a golden nugget that just gives an ‘oh, wow, really’ moment!
Take for example my very happy virtual bumping into with Tom Hobden, Artistic Director of UNIT a month ago. I’d kept seeing rave reviews of his online course ‘Dance, Digital and Participation’ keep popping into my Facebook newsfeed. So, I thought I’d give it a punt.
I think he’d be happy for me to say that our approaches to digital and participation have been running in parallel for some time, but our paths hadn’t crossed. He was aware of NOCTURN but sadly me unaware of him. My ‘oh, wow, really’ was that he was using a past piece of mine, ‘Revelations of Miss White’ a dance mystery told only on Facebook, as an example of innovation. Very flattered. It was a real boost to hear someone else’s perception of my creative practice and its importance in this digital era.
Jump to today and I’ve had another laughter-filled deep conversation with Tom. It’s so refreshing speaking with a fellow artist, who’s got that entrepreneurial gusto, and is thinking and challenging us to be positively different. If more like-minded artists like Tom and I gathered together we just might radically come up with a fresh approach, which I’m all for.
For me the pandemic has demonstrated that reaching out and taking a chance to properly talk can open up some powerful discussions with new people, who just may nudge your career in a new direction, or at the very least say ‘hey, you’re on the right track’.