Cooped

Cooped is a haunting 5-minute dance film that powerfully responds to the COVID-19 pandemic, with added resonance after the killing of George Floyd. Commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum’s Works & Process Virtual Commissions during the pandemic lockdown in 2020, American choreographer Jamar Roberts created the work entirely on an iPad in his own home, with a dramatic music score composed by David Watson (bagpipes) and Tony Buck (drums). Set in a dimly lit apartment, the solo performance features Roberts’ powerful, stretching limbs clashing with the space’s limitations. The constrained frame and moody lighting establish a sense of claustrophobia and disorientation, evoking the anxiety of isolation many experienced during lockdown.

But Cooped goes beyond the universal condition of confinement to address the specific racialized realities of the pandemic in the US, as the infection statistics and death toll reflect the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Black communities. When structural racial injustice intersects with public health failure, African Americans are prone to suffering as a result of their relatively disadvantaged socio-economic background, leaving the community the most exposed and vulnerable to the effects of the pandemic. The dance, in its experimental attempt, thus captures the fear of sickness and the anxiety of quarantine. As the title suggests, Cooped captures a feeling of confinement, both physically and mentally, while historically relating to the trauma of Black bodies being relegated to live within confined spaces. The result is a meditation on the burden of the Black body in America, as they remain visible yet unseen, present but marginalized. This display of a dancing Black body peers into the psyche of marginalized people in the COVID-19 pandemic and demonstrates their strength, beauty, and resilience.