But these crises have demonstrated that recovery in this context should not be a nostalgic return to the normal, because the existing conditions of the ‘normal’ was what precipitated the crisis. In the region, the Hong Kong protests are roiled by deep sociopolitical unrest while the Australian bushfires warn of larger climate catastrophe.

It painfully revealed the debilitating conditions and vulnerabilities of being a dancer within a precarious arts ecology. While Covid-19 is a global health emergency, it also manifested the symptoms of much longer socio-economic, political and ecological crises, exposing complex systems that have already been chronically ill. In these extraordinary circumstances where we are unable to gather, to move, and even to touch, dancers are faced with an impossible set of conditions-how to dance when we are all ill? As events, performances and festivals are cancelled or deferred to an uncertain future, many arts and cultural workers are left suspended in its wake.

Governments implement stricter measures to enforce social distancing, as an immunological response to curb the spread of the global pandemic. The world is standing still amidst transnational choreographies of movement control orders, curfews and lockdowns.

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