Movement is a staple of Sylvan Esso videos. Think of the community dance in “Coffee,” the lone male dancer in “Kick Jump Twist,” and the choreographed exuberance of “PARAD(w/m)E.” In part, it’s just a natural extension of the Durham duo’s potent, rippling rhythms. What better way to materialize their sound than to show bodies moving in tandem with it?

Movement again features prominently in Sylvan Esso’s newest videos, “Ferris Wheel” and “Rooftop Dancing,” as their third album, Free Love, approaches on September 25. The visuals do more than demonstrate movement for movement’s sake: They celebrate the way physicality connects us to our bodies and our bodies connect us to our communities at a time when that feels more precious than ever.

Finding our unique rhythms in the beat of a song—what those with grace to spare call “dancing”—helps us to inhabit not just ourselves but the world at large. But the coronavirus pandemic has changed the nature of movement, confining us to our homes and deterring us from gathering together. Being “out and about” now feels less like sharing space and more like maneuvering through it as quickly and distantly as we can, which is what makes Sylvan Esso’s latest videos so gratifying.   

In “Ferris Wheel,” singer Amelia Meath dances by herself in an empty amusement park, winding and wending as if her body were water. It’s evident and empowering how much she lives in and loves her body. Meath has regularly appeared—and danced—in Sylvan Esso’s previous visuals, but here, she commands the empty space, asserting her body and its might.   

The focus on Meath’s solitary form against the park’s saturated backdrop came out of necessity. Sylvan Esso explained on Instagram that the video was shot safely, which meant limiting who appeared in front of the camera. But “Rooftop Dancing” is different, broadening the number of people while relying heavily on video shot using digital camcorders and smartphones. There’s nothing official about the production’s crew and set, and it captures a reverential glimpse of the way people still move, still dance, despite everything.

“Rooftop Dancing” shows a mishmash of New Yorkers dancing in parks, streets, and on rooftops, as the title promises. Indoors or outdoors, they move quietly, their twirls and sashays restrained, as though they can still hear the echoing cautions from earlier this spring, when the city morphed into an epicenter. But nevertheless, they move.

“Ferris Wheel” and “Rooftop Dancing” elevate the power of movement in Sylvan Esso’s music higher than ever before, not despite but because of the circumstances in which they were created. I, for one, feel moved to move—not for exercise or errands, but as a means to reconnect to the present moment and the space I require for it. As Meath sings on “Rooftop Dancing,” “We’re all running, outrunning death/Summertime breaking, but we’re chasing it/Forever rooftop dancing.”

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