LIFE&ARTS DANCING REIMAGINED
Pandemic forced Flux + Flow to explore new ways to keep its members on the move
Last March, when the coronavirus pandemic necessitated the suspension of in-person classes at the Flux + Flow Dance and Movement Center in Clintonville, Laura Steinmaus wasn’t sure how she would keep moving. h “I was used to going then regularly to the dance classes, so I knew I was going to really miss that,” said Steinmaus, 45, a Columbus resident who had been taking classes at Flux + Flow for several years. h Steinmaus is one of about 100 “community members” at the center — that is, adult, non-professional dancers who participate in classes and appear in some performances (under the auspices of Fluxflow Dance Project, the group also has its own professional company members).
“I’ve taken a lot of classes there, anything from contemporary to ballet and everything in between — I’ve done belly dancing,” Steinmaus said.
Yet, after the initial shock of shutting down, Flux + Flow co-founder Russell Lepley wasn’t about to let the dancing come to an end.
“We flipped immediately to going online,” Lepley said. “Initially, we were doing Facebook Live classes.”
About two weeks later, though, Lepley felt it was time to do something more ambitious: with co-founder Filippo Pelacchi, Lepley decided to invite community
members to collaborate on a new piece via Zoom.
The resulting dance, titled “Spatula,” was filmed last fall in the Park of Roses and will premiere Saturday on the website of Flux + Flow, flux-flow.com. The 20minute dance film will be shown in limited-capacity in-person screenings on weekends in April at the center on Crestview Road.
Co-directed and co-choreographed by Lepley and Pelacchi, “Spatula” borrows its title from the common
kitchen utensil found in most dancers’ homes. In the choreographers’ conception, however, the item could be used to metaphorically ward off the coronavirus.
“We all have spatulas and pot lids in our house, so we’re going to fight this unknown thing,” Lepley said. “We could swing our spatula around in frustration, but also it’s kind of ridiculous and funny at the same time.”
Forty dancers, including Steinmaus, initially signed up to rehearse during twice-weekly Zoom sessions.
“We were all just inside and I was looking for an opportunity to still connect with people and still be part of a community, even when you’re isolated with your family indoors,” Steinmaus said. “It was nice to have a group of people you could see once or twice a week.”
In time, each dancer constructed their own costume meant to resemble armor, but they were free to use materials that were at hand. For example, Steinmaus ended up utilizing some items that have become familiar during the pandemic.
“I had a lot of Amazon bags that I used, because we were getting a lot of grocery deliveries,” Steinmaus said. “I had a lot of toilet paper, too.”
One duet features dancers bearing 8-foot wooden poles.
As current events continued to evolve, so did the dance, which became less combative over time.
“The George Floyd protests happened, and that was really interesting because it really shifted — suddenly swinging spatulas and all this aggressive stuff felt not really appropriate at that moment, so we kind of let all that stuff go,” Lepley said. “Somehow, by September, we found a way to marry it together.”
By then, the participating dancers had gone from 40 to 24. After all, making a dance is a big commitment, and people’s lives were more hectic than ever.
“I think — I know — for some people it was like another task and it was psychologically stressful, not to mention people homeschooling their kids and all the stuff that was happening,” said another community member, Michelle Herman, a 66-year-old Clintonville resident and English professor at Ohio State University.
“But for those of us who stayed, even though a lot of us were very busy, it really felt like an anchor,” Herman said. “It felt like the one thing you could count on.”
Whether in this or past pieces, Lepley enjoys working with untrained adult dancers, who, for this project, included individuals as young as 25 and as old as 75.
“There’s a lot of personality and experience in their bodies,” he said.
The decision was also made not to perform the work for live audiences but to film it in the Park of Roses. Doug Carraway handled the videography and editing, and Sharon Udoh, who performs as Counterfeit Madison, composed an original score for piano and voice.
Following an initial in-person trial rehearsal in the park in early August, the filming commenced the following month. A total of 10 three-hour sessions took place on Sundays starting in September.
“There was a really satisfying moment: ‘Oh, wow — we are dancing together,’ and that it was possible,” Lepley said. “We’d all been dancing without one another for so long.”
Herman describes a feeling of giddiness upon arriving at the park with her dancer colleagues.
“Most of us had not seen another living soul in person, other than the people we live with, in months,” Herman said. “There was this astonishing feeling of being in this field with all of these people. We all kept giggling.”
Not that it was all smooth sailing.
“There were definitely challenges,” Lepley said. “We were doing it on three hours on Sundays, and people were biking by, walking by.”
Plus, as late summer turned into late fall, weather issues occasionally got in the way.
“Our costumes stayed the same,” Herman said. “So if it was 90 degrees, or if it was snowing, we were all wearing the exact same thing we’d been wearing.”
In the end, though, the film came together. Lepley said he is as proud of this piece as just about any he has choreographed.
“Now that the finished result is there, I’m very, very pleased with it and I’m excited to share it with people,” he said.
For the dancers, though, the journey was its own reward.
“It really allowed you to have that community and have that sense of togetherness,” Steinmaus said.
For her part, Herman won’t soon forget the experience of creating a new dance under most unusual circumstances.
“It was exhilarating and it was exhausting,” she said. “And when it was over, we really sad and we were really relieved.”
tonguetteauthor2@aol.com