Let’s Dance : Lockdown Photo-essay
A photo-essay featuring people dancing to music in their living rooms during lockdown.
While revelry has been all-but pulled from public life, the images capture small moments of cathartic abandon transcending the living rooms that frame our lives in these times.
Accompanying the images in contrast, is a piece of text describing the struggles within their lives.
Avigal lives alone, upstairs from her sister, and keeps herself occupied during lockdown running a shakshuka and humous take-away service from her home. Feeding the city from her kitchen with recipes that have circulated around her family for generations. A family that centres around food. This week hadn’t gone as well with the orders and she welcomes the opportunity to dance the night away - another deep passion of Avigal’s, her childhood wish to be a dancer. She sees the shoot as permission to be one for the evening. We turn her living room into a dance floor and she throws herself at the project with delight and a little bit of mischievous. ‘This is what music does to me’ she says, ‘and I hope you don’t mind twerking!’
Bob, aged 75 from Brooklyn. It’s Raining Men, on repeat in his apartment. The one and only song he cared to dance to, and he must have danced to it 20 times. Some accomplishment considering the spinal abscess he has spent the last two years suffering from, unable to walk unaided. His health regimen this past year is dependent on the good deeds of friends and neighbours. A social character with a hundred stories before the starter arrives. Typically at the heart of the Gay and Lesbian Jewish community - Lockdown has hit Bob hard. He glows at the fact he received his first vaccine dose and boasts how he’ll be immune by June.
Geraldine and Radha Impeccable music taste and my neighbours at number 11. Romeo and Juliet vibes in the air, perhaps the internal balcony. She, a lawyer and singer. Stunning voice wasted on law (my opinion). He, the first to get his hands dirty to help when required. An advertising creative in a new company and a DJ. With no offices to go, and no clubs to DJ in their lives transformed having fought hard for four years for the opportunity to buy an old building (our building), moving from a tiny apartment too small for half of them. Now parents to a young boy. Kind, generous, conscientious. And they love music. Great selection of tracks as they dance in their fairy tale living room.
Stien and Pedro My neighbours at number 5. You’d struggle to find a pretentious bone in their bodies. Stien built her house with her bare hands, in spite of the naysayers. Reconnecting with her father in the process. Her father used to live in a squat for many years, living at a distance from one another, but working on the house has brought them in sync. A beautiful thing. They call him WikiPedro, you want to be on his side in a pub quiz. Pedro has been my side-kick on many a dance floor and always has a party planned in the pipeline. Which is funny considering his day job, high up in the ministry managing politicians and what not.
Anne is a primary school teacher and an excellent dancer. Bas is the architect that designed my home, and all my neighbours homes, two of which feature in this photographic series. We won the right to buy the building from the landlord after four long years and the project has become Bas’s life’s work. Walking into their home you soon realise Bas isn’t your average architect. His vast record collection of obscure world music with a particular harping for Indonesian psychedelic rock is punctuated only by his 70s Berlin era synth pop set-up. He’s working on a recreation of Absolute Body Control - Figures, which he hopes to perform live as soon as lockdown allows. Bas tells me authoritatively that 1979 by the Smashing Pumpkins is the best track to dance to ever made, which he and Anne go on to prove.
Robyn is a copy writer originally from the North of England. She is a single mother of a five year old with a full plate due to minimal family support. Her quiet demeanour belies the best sense of humour in town and a strong moral compass. I value her deeply as a friend. Her father was very sick when we did this shoot. Turns out he only had a few days left to live. He died before she could visit him to share last words. We choose to shoot in front of her couch, the picture above the desk reads, ‘Don’t forget you are sitting on a chair on a planet in an infinite universe we hardly know anything about.’ This sets the scene. ‘I haven’t danced in years. And I miss it,’ she tells me as we turn up Prince’s, Controversy. She didn’t need any coaxing. A transformation-passionate, bold, playful. Prince grants Robyn permission to let it all go.
Inge is a stylist. When I enter their home the shoot becomes a collaboration; working with her to accentuate the photographic opportunities that present themselves. It’s very creative and doing this with Inge was great fun. We settle on shooting in the bedroom, a mysterious space, covered in drapes, DJ decks conveniently at the foot of the bed. She tells me how much she likes the layers. ‘I loved this project so much’ she tells me after the shoot. ‘Because you aren’t posing when you’re really dancing.’ Aron has become one of my closest friends. A journalist, DJ and writer. His music is compelling in a way I can only describe as that spot between suffering and beauty. His mother was a celebrated author who suffered a very public fall from grace. It’s an experience that scarred Aron, but has also led him along a path of self discovery and forgiveness, defining his identity afresh since his mother died of cancer last year. At one point during our shoot Aron drops Roy Davis Jr.’s Gabriel, which he’d played once at club with his mother was standing next to him. The single moment he recalls where music was the glue that bonded them.
Shayne and Olivier The first to jump at the chance at dancing in their living room, no questions asked. ‘Music is everything to me. Everything,’ Shayne tells me as she welcomes me into their riverside apartment. Almost true. She’s rather fond of her black cat Lipstick and boyfriend Olivier too. She doesn’t hesitate at which music to put on and it’s clear dance is a portal for Shayne. She used to work behind the bar at a major club venue and she misses the atmosphere, friends and music deeply. Olivier, ever the welcoming host opens with, ‘every time I see you I wonder why I see you so rarely.’ It’s such a warm thing to say and I wonder the same, feeling gratitude for the camera in my hands, the conduit for our meeting.
Tamarah and Bram are two artists living on up high in skyscraper apartment. They keep it pristine, but tonight the room turns into a no holds barred party. ‘It’s the lighting,’ says Tamarah. ‘I think I’m going to keep it this way’.