Dear dancers and families,
During this very strange time, when anxiety creeps around the corner while the beauty of spring argues against it, I have been spending time with scrapbooks, and writing my memoirs. I decided to do this because I wanted to utilize some of this time to reflect on how fortunate I have been in my life and my friendships, and in the wonderful communities I have been privileged to build and of which I have been a part.
From my earliest memories, I have enjoyed making friends through dancing together, and also dancing alone around the house. As an adult, I still enjoy taking class from others (looking at you, Mr. Martin!), and I love teaching, helping others find that “aha!” moment and creating the community of the class. So I miss the interactive flow of people in the studio together, but I am grateful for the technology that allows us to continue sharing time together and creating community in this new way. We can now dance alone around the house, together!
We humans are very adaptable. We adapting to this new mode, in which we are more separate from our peer group—at work or at school—and more together with our family group. We have gained the time we spent in commuting, but potentially lost some of the joy of new interactions and experiences daily. In order to continue our work or our education, we are spending even greater chunks of time reading and typing online.
I read recently in a health article (there have been so many, I can’t remember which!) that engaging in rhythmic activities such as singing and dancing is wonderfully soothing to the autonomic nervous system. These activities also help us maintain good lung function and oxygenation of the muscles. But these are just utilitarian excuses I’m giving you to persuade you to do something fun—let’s dance!
When I came back from last year’s sabbatical in London, I brought with me the desire to teach a new kind of class, one for non-dancers who would like to move more to counteract the tightening of the body as it matures. (This is a big thing in England, as part of the National Health Service’s wellness campaigns). When we transitioned to our online classes a couple of weeks ago, at first I kept the class we had been doing in-person, while assessing which things worked well online.
Now I’ve developed a new class, which I designed specifically for this format and this moment in time. As I led the class yesterday, I realized that this would be a really fun multi-age activity for all of us right now, as all of our bodies are getting tight with the stress of being together so much, of worrying about our family getting ill, providing food constantly, and so many other things that are nagging at us.
So I’d like to invite all of you to join us for Let’s Dance! To have the fun of thinking about other places, we’re using music from many different countries, and doing a lot of individual dancing around the living room to the music of Greece, Brazil, Italy—the list goes on! We begin each segment with about a minute of “classroom dancing,” but nothing that a complete beginner couldn’t handle at their own level. Then we let loose with some make-believe flamenco or cancan. You can dance with a partner (your dance-mad child), or on your own. Why let them have all the fun? Because of the improvisational segments, even young dancers at a fairly advanced level might enjoy the opportunity to cut loose to fun music, incorporating family members, pets, couches. I would also love to see some of you who now live far away, but remember good times dancing with me, to join us—we can do that through the magic of Zoom.
Let’s Dance! will continue as long as we need it. You can check the home page of the website for details about signing on, days, and time.
Let’s Dance! together. I can’t wait to see you.
–Mary Pat