Dancing During a Pandemic
Dancing away from home in Lisbon.
Back to real dancing again Raphaëlle Orgeret describes how her young dancers tried to keep dancing. When the pandemic started, we stopped everything, from March to September last year. We asked all our Lyon Branch members to send some photos, and with some clever editing from our committee members, we came up with fun videos and online classes, but no child or teenager got involved with that kind of class. They couldn’t be bothered. When it became possible, classes for younger dancers resumed, dancing with masks most of the time. We didn’t have big numbers, as no new dancers had joined, but we managed to keep our 20 young dancers dancing throughout the pandemic one way or another. We even managed to keep our dancing trip to Lisbon in July! Ten teenagers went with me to dance with the local young dancers and visit the beautiful city. We had a ball!
Saturday Morning Zooming Moira Korus reports on how one childrens’ class kept their skills up. Rosedale Kids classes in Toronto, Canada decided to go on Zoom exactly a year ago in October 2020. Our numbers are very small and there is lots of time for individual attention. In our family class, parents attend with their children in person and so it was a natural progression for parents to dance with the younger kids during our Zoom classes. Working out where the top of the set
Deer o’Dale Dancers, Ufa, as Scots and Vikings
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was and deciding which was the men’s side and which the ladies’ side was a bit of a challenge. Gavin Keachie, our other teacher, joined us most Saturday mornings and by the end of the year was able to put our 8-12 year olds through some quite complex dances. Our classes went from October to May, and we finished with an online ceilidh with some fabulous recitations, songs, and music performances from many of our regular dancers. While Zoom kept us together as a class for the pandemic year, I know we are all looking forward to the time we can return to the shared dance floor.
Young Dancers Virtual Fun Malin Altenmüller of the RSCDS Youth Branch remembers how young dancers put together entries for the RSCDS Virtual Festival when they could not dance together. The submissions for the Virtual Festival showed how dancing can be very creative and great fun, even when we could not meet together to dance. In parks, forests and riverbanks, we saw young dancers, trolls, Vikings and fairies coming together to enjoy reels and jigs, strathspeys and step dancing. Kilts and dresses, flowers and costumes came to shine in spring, midsummer and autumn. Various very imaginative ways were invented for keeping physically distant from each other: outside dancing, extra wide sets, crafted paper hands, tennis rackets and flags not only ensured safe dancing but looked great!
