Covid-19

These are interesting times we’re in. With “stay-at-home” orders, dance venues closed, and dance events cancelled... we’ve all had to get creative with keeping our dance lives going.

I created a Virtual Line Dance Class facebook group (private) for all the students of East Naples and the Vineyards to join in order to participate in Facebook Live dance classes. Several instructors and choreographers have done the same either with Facebook or Zoom. I’ve tried both - Facebook seems to work the best for what we’re doing. I guess if I had a more up-to-date laptop I might’ve been OK with Zoom, but there are just so many technical layers to using the program that Facebook is where I’ve stayed. Even if they do mute my videos.

I created a “public” line dance page for my beginners since so many of them were not on Facebook and were not interested in joining, either. Now they can follow a link which takes them to Facebook but the page is more like a website and they don’t have to be “on” Facebook in order to participate.

Choreographers are busy creating so many virtual dance events that we need calendars to keep it all straight! From the Digital Dance Weekends that Rachael put together; to the Streamline group (the UK instructors put together); to the Retro Line Dis-Dancing site where classics are being taught - there is no lack of dancing... anywhere on the globe!

It’s a new way of learning... and a new way of teaching... with steep learning curves on both sides of the classroom. But - we’re are learning. And we are dancing. And we are having a good time! It’s a bandaid until we can all be on the floor together again...