Physician-Choreographer Brings Health Care Workers' Pandemic Realities to the Screen

Full Circle dancer Misty Yackshaw is both a choreographer and a physician. This dual identity led to the creation of DISSONANCE, a dance work for film that makes vivid the early pandemic experiences of health care workers. Faced with an unknown enemy and working within a system unprepared, doctors and nurses fought to save lives under extreme conditions and surrounded by tragedy. Yackshaw interviewed doctors and nurses around the country about those extraordinary first months and about the lingering impacts they feel. Embodied by Full Circle dancers, their words come to life, helping viewers more fully perceive and understand experiences that will have lasting consequences. Created with a physician's knowledge and an artist's heart, DISSONANCE is dedicated to our health care workers, heroes but also humans.

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Photo Credit: Aster Lobel

Behind the Work with Choreographer Misty Yackshaw MD

It was hard to get excited about anything in 2020, but by early November I felt settled enough with the pandemic and life felt stable on that front. It was Thursday and the season opener of Grey’s Anatomy was finally upon us! (I am a physician and medical shows are a guilty pleasure of mine – ER, Chicago Med, Grey’s Anatomy, you get the picture.) I grabbed a cat and a glass of wine and got cozy. The opening showed “APRIL 2020” in bold letters and the audience was thrust into the chaos and fear of a hospital where everything felt threatening and unknown. Within 30 minutes I was crying and felt incredibly anxious.

Before the hour ended, the premise for DISSONANCE was established in my brain and I was thinking about what steps to take to make it happen. Every once in a while, an idea arrives from somewhere and it feels important. You get a gut feeling about it and you know it’s right. I felt that level of compulsion about this project. There was no choice about it. It was happening.

Over the following month, I interviewed 9 doctors and nurses from across the country about their experiences living and working during the pandemic. All of them work in hospitals and several of them work on critical care units, often transformed into “COVID units”. Some experienced racial slurs related to the pandemic, many were quickly becoming depressed and anxious, and most were experiencing frustration, fear, heartbreak and loneliness. (For those starting to lose sleep and develop anxiety, how were they realistically and quickly supposed to find someone to treat them so they could continue working effectively? That can take months when you aren’t working 14+ hour days.) Another almost universal sentiment expressed was that it felt good to talk about it. I knew going into this project that validation was at the core of what I hoped to accomplish. Acknowledging what is happening and thereby validating someone’s experience can be critical to moving through it. And truthfully, I worry about the future mental health of our frontline workers and healthcare providers. Nothing about the past year has been normal and trauma abounds.

Once the interviews were done, choreography and filming came easily enough. The cast and crew made safety allowances for COVID. I taught all choreography virtually and the dancers and I exchanged videos for rehearsing. There were no large group sections and partnering was done through a barrier. Editing was done over email. In short, we followed the spirit of 2020 where there were new methods and protocols for doing almost everything. What didn’t change was the joy I took in creating something with like-minded people. It was like finding home again. Something normal in the chaos.

My hope for DISSONANCE is that as many frontline workers and healthcare providers as possible see it, with the goal of giving them even just a little validation. I also hope it serves as a reminder of what we’ve come through thus far. The workers need to know that we still see them, long after the cheering has stopped and the vaccines have been distributed. Even when COVID feels like it is gone, some of them will carry this trauma with them. And we need to be there for them in whatever way we can. And as with any art, I hope you take from it what you will.

View the film DISSONANCE HERE

WYPR: On The Record Interview May 28, 2021

CREDITS:

Written, Choreographed, and Directed by Misty Yackshaw, MD

Director of Photography, Editor, Sound Mixer: Aster Lobel

Dancers: Stephanie Crockett

Kakuti Davis Lin

Allison Powell

Jenny Seye

Misty Yackshaw

Voice Actors: Stephanie Crockett

Matthew Davidson

Kakuti Davis Lin

Nicole Tucker Smith

John Matt Yackshaw

Misty Yackshaw

Music and Sounds: Alice in Winter, Hold This Place; Soundly

Filmed on location in Baltimore, MD and Columbia, MD

Message from the Choreographer

"A very heartfelt thank you to the 9 anonymous doctors and nurses from across the country who gave their time and energy to this project. It exists because of them and for them and every other frontline or healthcare worker. We see you."

Meet the Choreographer

Misty began dancing as a toddler in Myrtle Beach, SC and attended the Ballet Summer Intensive at the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities. She was a member of the University of South Carolina Dance Company and the USC West African Drum and Dance Ensemble as well as the independent company, Djoliba Don. From 2006-2009 she danced and choreographed with Full Circle Dance Company. After a long dance hiatus, she returned in 2016 and has been dancing with Full Circle to the present. Choreography for Full Circle has includes such works as Alternate Paradigm, Daydreams, The Ceiling and Comic Interlude. Her latest work is DISSONANCE, a dance film project debuting in April 2020. Misty enjoys creating character-centric pieces that explore the nuances of individuals and she loves to incorporate humor in dance when called for.

For press inquiries please contact our Associate Director,

Elizabeth Pelton at fullcircledanceco@gmail.com

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