Dancing through the Pain

In 2004, the arts activist and critic David Gere published his seminal work, How to Make Dances in an Epidemic: Tracking Choreography in the Age of AIDS. “In this era,” he wrote, dancing “commonly serves a mourning function, with fetishes of loss and longing literally embodied in the corporeality of the performers.” Twenty years later, Gere’s book finds an updated, French-language counterpart in Lucille Toth’s Danses et pandémies: Du sida à la covid-19 (Dance and pandemics: From AIDS to COVID-19). With her short volume, the choreographer and scholar primarily explores the francophone dance world’s rich variety of reflections on HIV’s impact on social relations. In a closing chapter, she gestures to the growing relevance of digital space for amateurs and professionals alike today.

Toth begins with the French choreographer Alain Buffard and his 1998 solo piece, Good...