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Coronavirus Disease 2019
My Shelter-in-Place Dance Party
Dancing it out long-distance with my sister during COVID-19 lockdown.
Posted May 19, 2020
One morning in late March, I woke up to the ding of a text. My sister, Ellen, had sent a link to a song, "Feel it Still" by Portugal the Man, and a familiar question: Dance Party?
I sent her a purple heart emoji and turned off my phone. I was in no mood to trade songs by text and dance it out, each of us in our bedroom or kitchen 3,000 miles apart, a morning ritual of gratitude and connection we often shared.
To be fair, COVID-19 hadn’t hit Chicago yet, where Ellen lives. I was in Seattle, waking up to Day 14 of mandatory isolation. That’s what we called it, not "sheltering in place," which sounds like it could be a staycation. Ellen was still going to spin classes at the gym, grocery shopping without a mask, inviting friends over for a glass of wine and a game of canasta. How I envied her.
Many of my best memories involve music. My first kiss was at the Roller Dome, during couples skate, neon lights flashing, "Don't Stop Believin’" pulsing through my veins. I grooved to The Doobie Brothers and Grand Funk Railroad in a packed arena at my first concert in eighth grade. My husband and I danced down the aisle at a tiny chapel in Vegas, just the two of us on our tenth Wedding Anniversary, with Fat Elvis singing "You Ain't Nothing But a Hound Dog." I never imagined that disappearing into the joy of music, dancing with abandon with thousands of strangers, my husband, or even alone would become a too-guilty pleasure.
At first, I hadn’t thought isolating would change my daily life much. I'm an introvert by nature. I have many friends I see every few months, but I don’t feel the need to leave my house for days at a time. I’m content writing novels, reading, walking in the woods with my dog, and gardening. And I dance throughout the day, shake out the tension in my body and the depression that easily makes me lethargic.
One song, just a few minutes while going about the rituals of my day, does the trick to boost my mood: A kick-ass shot of Lizzo belting “Good as Hell” while brushing my teeth, some old-school cool, BTO’s “Taking Care of Business” for a mid-morning break from writing, Tame Impala’s dreamy “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” while winding down and chopping veggies for dinner. My sister knows I suffer from depression; that’s part of the reason she sends me upbeat songs.
But as the virus spread, instead of writing, reading, gardening, or dancing, I watched CNN. It was impossible to look away. At least 37 people died in a nursing home less than 15 miles from my house in Bellevue, across the bridge from Seattle. I had to cancel a trip to see my 85-year-old parents in Wisconsin. And then, during the third week of isolation, the contract for my second novel was canceled because my publisher could no longer afford to pay the advance. Throughout the country, stores were going bankrupt, along with restaurants, nail salons, and other small businesses that were forced to shut down for a few weeks, not a few months. No one was really sure how long it would be.
Being a semi-hermit was suddenly no longer my choice. The forced isolation was laced with fear. As the virus spread, the death count continued to rise daily, I felt lonely and disconnected, even with my husband working in the basement, and my son taking online classes in his room. I thought it would help to stop watching the news, but every time I spoke with a friend on the phone or Zoom, that's all we could talk about.
“I’m sorry,” I told one friend, “I can’t talk for a while. I love you but I just can’t talk about the pandemic anymore. Let’s stay in touch by text.” But soon the short messages inquiring about health, work, and family became heart emojis, and then nothing. I couldn’t work on my novel because the virus infected my imagination, paralyzing me with guilt and shame for thinking of anything but the death and devastation happening around the world.
By the time Ellen invited me to dance it out together, my life had changed drastically without me fully realizing it. I thought about this on my post-breakfast walk with my double-doodle, Sasha Fierce, a mask in one pocket in case the trails were crowded, hand sanitizer in the other. These walks had gone from being meditative to being vigilant, from an exercise in gratitude to anxiously pulling my dog into the bushes every time I spied someone coming our way, making sure to keep our six-feet of potentially life-saving distance.
People passed by, and we greeted each other with “Stay well.” We smiled behind our masks, but it was more a gesture of hang in there than joy. When I wondered, had I stopped not just dancing but living? I took out my phone and called Ellen. “Hey,” I said, “is it too late for that dance party? I’m in the woods with Sasha.”
“Give me five minutes,” she said. “I’ll go in the backyard with Gussy.” I heard her lab-mix rescue dog barking his approval in the background before she hung up.
Five minutes later, I hit the play button on Spotify for "Feel it Still" and danced in a clearing in the woods with my dog, mask in my pocket, knowing my sister was doing the same thing. (Okay, Sasha was sniffing ferns but we were both happy.)
I didn’t need to Zoom or FaceTime with Ellen; it wasn’t a dance party in the traditional sense. We were, during those three minutes, connected with each other and our own souls, like the meditative act of taking deep breaths—on steroids. I realized I had, in fact, been holding my breath for weeks, waiting for something horrible to happen. And every day, something horrible did happen: More people died. More people didn’t have enough to eat. It was unfair, it was unseemly, that I could allow myself to feel joyful, even for those three minutes of dancing.
What I had forgotten was this: Dancing energizes me. This dancing was not about celebration, it was about refueling my soul. A kind of joyful resistance against giving up.
Now, in week six of voluntary isolating, my life has changed again—this time purposefully. I am choosing connection, even while sheltering at home, and making joyful choices. I can’t delve into my novel world; it’s too painful to be alone with my thoughts.
Instead, I’m building community with other authors by curating an anthology to raise money for bookstore owners struggling in the COVID-19 economy. I’ve learned by trial and error a few games to play with friends on Friday nights using Zoom. I can’t go to the nursery to buy flowers to plant, but some of the lettuce and carrot seeds I ordered by mail a few weeks ago are already sprouting. And, throughout the day, I’m dancing again, sometimes with my husband, sometimes alone to a song sent by my sister, and sometimes humming a snippet of Lizzo, standing tall and shaking my shoulders, just to remind myself that I do have some control.
Now, more than ever, I need to dance, to choose joy, even if only for 30 seconds. It’s a way to have a glimmer of control during this dark time. For me, it’s also a prayer for those who are struggling. A show of faith that we will all dance together again.
