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community and this stranger who was a threat to her but somehow warranted a place in her heart, prayers and service. In this act of inclusion, her heart expands, the wound appears smaller and courage appears.

      In the Circles of Resilience arts-humans from all over the larger global circle meet. Light is shed upon the wounding. A gentle one, facilitated by the healer in the room. We stay with the wound, caressing it, holding its hand, recognising how it lives in each of us and how it manifests itself in the collective. Dora the dancer, (all names changed) is a girl with, “half my heart in Bangladesh and half my heart in France”. Yamini the poet and traveller is stuck in Germany and therefore lost, seeking “tools and clarity“, envious of the plants that always seem to know which way the light is. In therapy circles, the wound is where the light comes in. When witnessed with courage, grace and compassion it presents an opportunity for transformation. Actor Anil and choreographer Danny both hold anger and guilt and the dichotomy of allowing these emotions to travel through their bodies like daily “visitors” questioning everything. “Where is our relevance? Are we doing enough? Was it always like this?!” Dance student Kriti is without words and cannot name her experience. Ananya the film maker feels absurd and ashamed but accepting and experimental too.

      “Mass suffering”, “P-bomb” (referring to the guilt that comes with privilege), “productivity”, “freaking out”, “democratic concerns”, “never-ending day”, “alternate universe”, “understanding of self”, “surrender”, “listen” and “loneliness” are some terms that populate these circles.

      John, the performance maker is “terribly calm”. This scares him. He jokes a lot. “It is what it is”, is his title for this chapter of human history. Aisha, studying performing arts in Vienna, says that like her, her anger does not leave the room. “It just stays there. And now, the apartment is feeling bigger.” This shift in just her physical space is a forewarning of the changes to come both in inner and outer worldscapes.

      As a movement artist, my body is my diagnostic tool. As a human, it is my map and locates me in the present. Priya, a Baroda-based filmmaker, reports feeling change, internal and bodily. “Sense-making has not happened yet.” Her feeling of helplessness as she hears a voice on a microphone tell daily wage workers: “The bus is full, please wait for the next one” and then: “This is for your own good” devastates her. She breaks, many of us cry. Our healer asks: “Are you willing to feel the pain?”

      Behind all the to-do lists, the activism and inequality, the productive days and the days we nail our practice, underlying every online dance class, lockdown poem or throwback video of last year’s travels is this question: “Are you willing to feel the pain?” Spending enough time in your wound means you get to know it really intimately: the voices that trigger it, the depth and rawness, the shadows that dance on its edges and the blood that spills out. When I see your wound, I see mine. The circle becomes a mirror, a non-hierarchical womb of safety and witnessing, and in that act of seeing, something already shifts.

      I imagine returning to the balcony with my German friend. I recall that moment of separation, where I was fool enough to think of her wound as just hers or her community’s. I ask forgiveness for every moment. I may have resented having to deal with the white guilt in the room, or rolled my eyes at Brahmin (upper class Hindu) guilt, or scoffed at patriarchal male guilt and first world self-loathing. Not because repentance, apology and perhaps even guilt are unnecessary (these are in fact essential), but only because each wound seems to be a way to enter and heal other wounds too. All wounds lead to each other. The fight is as much within as without. Are we willing to feel the pain, to stand in the wound together in Circles of Resilience, witnessing the scar that we collectively hold and individually manifest?

      This is my only interest for now.

      Diya Naidu is a dancer, choreographer and performance maker based in Bengaluru, South India. She makes work that seeks to speak to the spaces between us as people. Her current works are largely immersive and she explores and employs intimacy not just as a tool but also as resistance to the troubled times we are in. Her research delves into patriarchal penetration (how we carry patriarchy in our bodies), touch (intimacy and human connection) and engages with the audience as witness, not an external “other”. She directs a collective of independent artists and is constantly finding ways to make dance sustainable in the Indian dance ecology. In 2019 she performed in the Impulse Showcase as cast-member of “Ef_femininity”.

      HOCHX, MÜNCHEN, 30. April 2020, Foto: Benno Heisel / Antonia Beermann (Künstlerische Leitung / Baustellendienst), die im Haus waren, um herauszufinden, ob die neue Bühnentür schon eingebaut war. (War sie nicht.)