Last Thursday I was one of the thousands of expats who scurried home to Australia as the Covid-19 crisis erupted. I had spent the last nine months living and working in Berlin, after developing a deep urge to throw myself into the unfamiliar. As a gay man who spent the first 19 years of his life cooped up in Cronulla, living in Berlin was an exercise in liberation. I found myself meeting people and finding places that would’ve once felt so foreign, but eventually it began to feel like a home of sorts. In Berlin I fell into its internationally renowned clubbing scene. Almost every weekend I would gallivant around clubs including the Berg

1. Dancing alone in a quarantine hotel room has cured my
coronavirus dread
Ben Freeman
What began as a random boogie has turned into a daily ritual, giving me a break from the insanity of Covid 19
Thu 23 Apr 2020 03.35 BST
L
ast Thursday I was one of the thousands of expats who scurried home to Australia as the Covid-19
crisis erupted. I had spent the last nine months living and working in Berlin, after developing a
deep urge to throw myself into the unfamiliar. As a gay man who spent the first 19 years of his life
cooped up in Cronulla, living in Berlin was an exercise in liberation. I found myself meeting people
and finding places that would’ve once felt so foreign, but eventually it began to feel like a home of
sorts.
In Berlin I fell into its internationally renowned clubbing scene. Almost every weekend I would gallivant
around clubs including the Berghain and its accompanying Panorama Bar, finding solace in the knowledge I
was surrounded by people like me, with no ties to who I was back home, listening to dance music that had
the ability to transcend and transform. Clubbing and dance culture can seem frivolous to the average
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2. onlooker but for me they were a form of therapy. Entering a club could somehow feel as though I was the
only person in the world but also a speck in a field of glitter.
In primary school I was in the dance troupe until my final year. When I started high school, I quit dancing,
thinking that boys my age just didn’t do that sort of stuff. My high school years ticked by, and I only came
out three days after I graduated. Stepping on to the dancefloors in Berlin was like finding that primary
school boy again. Through swaying my body, sometimes erratically, I understood that I could express both
my masculine and feminine sides, and the clubs helped me become the person I was always supposed to be.
When bans on large public gatherings began, the threat of not being able to step into these spaces became
frighteningly real – even more so when I made the incredibly hard decision to return to Australia.
For the last 13 days I’ve been in a hotel in Sydney, waiting out the Australian government’s mandatory 14
days of quarantine. My experience has been better than what I’ve seen at other hotels or in other states, but
that’s not to say cabin fever hasn’t been lining the walls of my king-sized bedroom. I’m naturally an
extrovert so the idea of being trapped for two weeks wasn’t exactly ideal, but I swiftly found ways to keep
my mental health in check, one of which is turning my room into a makeshift dancefloor.
On my first day, after doing a lousy excuse for a hotel workout, I began to just naturally have a boogie to
whatever house mix I was listening to. All of a sudden, the anxiety about returning home and feeling
confined subsided; I closed my eyes and was back on the dancefloor. What began as just a random shake of
my ass quickly turned into a daily ritual. I put on a fun shirt or something of the sort for my workout and
alternated between drawing the curtains to create a dark and moody atmosphere and leaving them wide
open, letting the locals watch me flail my arms to Madonna. I would sometimes imagine I was on a
dancefloor, filled with queer bodies but just as often I wouldn’t do any daydreaming; I was content with the
fact I was dancing alone in my quarantine hotel room, lapping up the ridiculousness of it all. Funnily, both
feelings weren’t dissimilar, I felt as alone in the world when I envisioned myself in a club and when I looked
out the hotel window at Sydney Harbour. Finding comfort in solitude was calming and cathartic when the
world felt so distant.
There’s a form of dance called ecstatic dance, usually held in halls or studios pre-corona. The only rules are
that you shouldn’t wear shoes and you can’t stop moving. I went to one of these sessions in Berlin. The
music began quite ambient, before progressing into classical, then tribal, crescendoing into deep techno,
and then descending back into the ambient music that started the class. This method of dance is said to help
people reach a state of ecstasy, diminishing the stresses of the outside world, allowing them to focus only
on their bodies and the rhythm. I found my version of ecstatic dance to be really helpful in practising
mindfulness – giving me a break from the insanity of Covid-19.
There were moments in clubs in Berlin where I felt complete, unadulterated joy. Never before in my life had
I experienced such a feeling. I’ve learnt now not to reminisce about what I’ve lost but rather to hold on to
the belief that this feeling can exist.
I really didn’t think I would ever be trapped in a room for two weeks amid a pandemic, but I also wouldn’t
have imagined I’d be able to handle it so calmly. While you may not be in a government-sanctioned
quarantine hotel, nothing is stopping you from closing the curtains, dimming the lights and popping it back
to some Kate Bush in your lounge room. It’s my last night in quarantine tonight and I think I’m going to
blast Madonna’s Into the Groove:
Only when I’m dancing can I feel this free,
At night I lock the doors, where no one else can see,
I’m tired of dancing here all by myself,
Tonight I want to dance with someone else.
Though it’s doubtful the security guard outside my door will want to join me, I know that even trapped in a
hotel amid a global crisis, I’m going to feel completely free.
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3. • Ben Freeman is a writer from Sydney. He has also written for Billboard, OUT magazine, Red Bull Music
and Junkee
• Comments on this piece are premoderated to ensure discussion remains on topics raised by the writer.
Please be aware there may be a short delay in comments appearing
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Topics
Coronavirus outbreak
Opinion
Dance music
Mental health
LGBT rights
Sydney
Health
Clubbing
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