John P. Harrison IV/The Skyline View
f l e s y m h t i w g n i c n Da This strange little thing called Zoom By John P. Harrison IV Staff Contributor
@JohnPHarrisonIV
It’s a sunny day at Dolores Park in San Francisco’s Mission District. Spread out in rows on the roller hockey court are a group of people bedecked in a colorful array of spandex and sweatbands. The echoes of their laughter mingle with the familiar sounds of the Saturday park crowd: skateboarders grinding the rails and cursing their inevitable betrayal at the hands of gravity, day drinkers chatting about their day jobs, children playing at the nearby playground. Cutting through the noise, the opening drums to Hot Lunch Jam from the musical Fame bring the dancers to attention. Standing at the front of the class with a chain link fence behind him, Rory Davis shifts from side to side with alternating arms extending upward in a reaching motion. The class follows suit. He calls it Roryography. “This dance class that I started teaching Spring 2021
about four years ago called Roryography was very much in the spirit of a Richard Simmons VHS tape, and was intended for friends of mine that aren’t really professional dancers and/or performers,” Davis said. “It was just an excuse for us to kind of have some fun and party together and dance and feel good. The first time that I threw this party, about a hundred-or-so people showed up. There were grandchildren with their grandparents, people came in full drag costuming, all ages. Everybody you can picture was all there, and it was just this great overwhelming response to the whole thing.” It wasn’t long before his dance party grew into a weekly class at ODC Dance Commons. That is, until COVID-19 came along. “About a year ago all of that stopped dead in its tracks,” Davis said. “So, I continued doing the class online on this strange little thing called Zoom that no one had really heard of, and luckily for me the follow-in-the-moment exercise aerobics schtick worked in the 80s for Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons, and it still very much works now.”
At Skyline College, our own dance program has charted similarly unknown territory with the shift to distance learning over the past year. Amber Steele, who heads the dance department, described her experience over a Zoom call from her in-home studio where she teaches. “The short answer is, it sucked for everybody,” Steele said. “I’m super privileged in many ways. One thing is that I’m married to a video specialist, so that’s how we have this fabulous ring light over here, and a nice brightly lit white room with a ton of lighting. I’m just so grateful that I’m able to have a place. When we first went to shelter-in-place, I was teaching in our living room. ... Everybody else was taking class in their living room or their bedrooms.” When it comes to dancing at home, sometimes the most inconsequential thing can make all the difference in the world. Like carpets. “It’s nice that I don’t have carpets,” Steele said. “So I try to remember that for all of my students turning — It’s kind of out because
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