Quarantine Dances - An International Collaborative Project
- Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
- Jun 28, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: 22 hours ago
During the first months of the pandemic, when social dance communities around the world suddenly found themselves physically separated, a group of artists, dancers, musicians, filmmakers, and creators from different countries came together to build something collective across distance.
Quarantine Dances was born during that moment of uncertainty and isolation as an international collaborative project connecting music, dance, and visual arts through remotely recorded performances created by the participants themselves.
Everything was filmed and recorded individually from home during quarantine periods across different parts of the world, then later edited into collaborative video works.
More than 120 people from 5 continents participated in the project, creating a large artistic exchange that reflected not only the challenges of that historical moment, but also the desire to remain connected through creativity, rhythm, movement, and community.
The Dance Collaboration
The central video of the project brought together dancers from different countries performing and filming themselves remotely during quarantine. Each person recorded from their own home environment, creating a visual mosaic of movement, isolation, creativity, and collective participation during a moment when social dancing itself had temporarily disappeared from everyday life.
Rather than attempting to recreate a traditional dance performance, the project became a document of adaptation - a way of continuing artistic dialogue and human connection despite physical distance.
The Musician Collaboration
Alongside the dancers, musicians from different parts of the world also collaborated remotely, individually recording their parts from home studios, bedrooms, living rooms, and improvised recording spaces during lockdown periods.
The final musical montage became another important part of the project, showing not only the collaborative performance itself, but also the creative resilience that emerged during that period among artists trying to continue creating under entirely new circumstances.
Behind the Scenes - The Human Side of the Project
The making-of video documents part of the process behind Quarantine Dances, including testimonials from participants reflecting on the emotional and artistic impact of the experience.
More than simply a remote artistic production, the project became for many people a way to maintain a sense of community, exchange, and emotional connection during a historically difficult moment marked by uncertainty, isolation, and interruption of normal social life.
Looking back today, Quarantine Dances also remains as a historical snapshot of how artistic communities across different countries explored new forms of online collaboration and collective creation during the pandemic years.
Many of the educational and creative projects later developed through Forró New York - including online courses, workshops, lectures, and collaborative productions - were influenced in some way by the experiments, discoveries, and challenges that emerged during that period.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rafael Piccolotto de Lima is the Founder and Educational Director of Forró New York, as well as a Latin Grammy-nominated composer, arranger, and music director.
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