In this time of a pandemic and social distancing, this film explores the desire for human connectivity. My hands and arms explore the space around me, reaching and searching and grasping, symbolizing the desire to connect to someone and unable to do so. In contrast, I’ve included actual human connectivity as I am now experiencing it— the connection between me and the human within my body, and me and my husband, whom I have an ever growing and evolving physical relationship with. These two extremely personal and present relationships involving touch and connection contrast starkly with moments of constant movement without connection.

“We’re just stupid fools who want it all back. Maybe all is made to evaporate.” The entire world has changed dramatically in an incredibly short period of time, from one of close human contact to one of isolation and distance. While we cannot change the loss of the world we took for granted, we can accept reality and move forward in a new form. This piece parallels the changes society has undergone in human contact during the COVID-19 pandemic by personifying the process of evaporation, the departure from one state of being and transcendence to another.

“Evaporation” depicts an individual initially bound to the earth. Through three different scenes, the individual shifts from moving on the ground to becoming more and more airborne until he is dancing entirely in the air, representing transformation of being and an embodiment of evaporation. The film makes use of overhead shots, changing camera angles, and various locations to uniquely illustrate such a process.

This film explores the concept of being diverse from others but still showing that no matter how different we are, we are all connected to each other.

Ashton Waldron is a screendance filmmaker nestled in the city of New York. She completed her Master of Fine Arts degree in dance with Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in 2020. Her thesis delved into the thoughts and ideas surrounding how to make screendance resonate with the general public by ways of incorporating social media. She hopes to continue to explore her artistic skills and voice through screendance.

“No more beautiful dances” wrestles with the ideas of exploration, introspection and reframing a woman after becoming a mother, and being an immigrant. Lenzu’s dance-theater piece uses spoken word and drawings to tell a personal vision of femininity, and what it means to be a woman today.

De-Eschatology is a physical manifestation of the claustrophobic conditions created by the COVID-19 crisis and the yearning to break free from them. The piece seeks to draw attention to a heightened sense of touch, which directly results from the lack of physical contact many in quarantine face. The film's trajectory explores the gradual de-escalation of shelter-in-place orders, and its psychological effects.

This film is about feeling strong.