As I write this I am sitting on the balcony of my apartment in Brussels, where I am staying in self-isolation since several weeks now. I am not afraid of spending a lot of time alone; I am lucky to have a comfortable home and as an artist I am used to self-isolating for periods of focussed work. But this feels different. There’s a sense of anxiety that never leaves me — due to the virus, it’s spread and in particular how it will affect the most vulnerable populations, but also due to not knowing how long this will last and what the future holds. Behind this feeling lies another one, much harder to pinpoint. Not fear exactly, but a kind of melancholy that comes from the knowledge that the world we were inhabiting just a little while before has suddenly and irrevocably changed. And that things will likely not go back to how they were anytime soon. I call this feeling sadness. 

Sometime ago the unbelievable happened, the world suddenly ground to a halt. Italy was the first European country to be hit by the pandemic after China, and for many weeks we watched the crisis unfold from Belgium as if peering into the future. During those first few weeks, just before the lockdown arrived in Belgium, I began to work on a new performance called The Sadness. The piece takes as a starting point the current climate crisis and the feelings of sadness and anxiety that often result from ecological awareness. Like the detective in a film noir, we discover that we are tragically implicated in the crime.The feeling leads to a sense of inertia, what theorist Timothy Morton calls our “curling up in a fetal position” moment. And the devastation of the environment is not the only reason to feel a sense of despondency and bleakness. Neoliberal policies everywhere add needlessly to the ecological problem, while further alienating us from each other and contributing to a feeling of futurelessness. 

On tour in Germany last summer, an American musician based in New York mentioned to me that friends of hers would often listen to Sad Rap when they felt down about where Trump was taking the country. Curling up and listening to sad music seemed to give them the will to continue on with their lives and their activism. This got me thinking that sadness is often a feeling that we keep at bay instead of whole heartedly embracing. Wallowing in ones emotions is generally viewed as negative, while anxiety and sadness are often seen as individual problems. What happens when we take sadness as an emotion we can spend some time with, and even share? Is there a political potential to our collective melancholy? Could embracing Sadness give us the strength to insist on a new normal, less devastating towards the environment and more attentive of those who are most vulnerable?

The Sadness is a dance piece in the form of a concert. As we are not able to meet in the studio, we are currently continuing our research together online. Working from home, we meet virtually every few days to exchange ideas and share our work. Below is a first mix by musician Lynn Suemitsu of some of our home recordings:
 
 

 
 
And some links to our ongoing research on Sadness & Political Melancholy:

Three Modalities of Futurelessness (Tre modalità di assenza di futuro) - Terike Haapoja

Can we re-imagine sadness as an empowering force? (Possiamo ri-immaginare la tristezza come una forza che ci conferisce potenza?)
- Neha Kale on Audrey Wollen & Sad Girl Theory

Small Anatomy of Political Melancholy - Lieven De Cauter
 
 
 

 
The Sadness (credits)
concept, choreography, Ula Sickle; musical compositions Lynn Suemitsu; creation, performance, Amber Vanluffelen, Camilo Majía Cortés, Sidney Barnes; light design, Ryoya Fudetani; sound technique, Noé Voisard; app design, Black Adopo; dramaturgy, Maru Mustrieva & Persis Bekkering; costume design, Sabrina Seifried
co-production: CCN-Ballet national de Marseille in the frame of accueil studio - Ministère de la Culture, STUK House for Dance, Image and Sound (Leuven) / donaufestival (Krems), Pianofabriek / Kunstenwerkplaats (Brussels).