Dancing in lockdown

Zoom enables our Hawaiian dance group to dance together, even at a distance. Yoohoo! I see your faces, I hear you speak! And here we are, dancing in lockdown with our dancing friends.  Our lovely instructor* took the initiative and set it up, and I hope and pray we can Zoom in every Monday from now on. It’s the next best thing to the real thing, and it is real in its way.

In normal times, trying new hobbies is healthy, it’s fun, and it’s good for the brain. But in COVID-19 lockdown, I’m craving for familiar activities with familiar groups of people.

Here’s to every trainer and leader and teacher and chairperson who sets up some sort of engaging activity with the groups they lead! That includes, in my world, fitness trainers and choir directors and dance leaders: it’s not easy to maintain that personal link, but they’re all searching for the right formula and some have found it already. Their ingenuity amazes me. My friends have book groups, a Latin group (!), a Shakespeare-reading group (!), and yoga teachers that are functioning in the lockdown environment.

I’m now 100% appreciative of the difference between a slick exercise video by a stranger and a rough and ready live-streamed video by the person you have been working or playing with for months or years. In a world that’s out of control we need the familiar. We need our people.

On the other hand, here’s another model. One friend has set up a small “morning scribble” group: a handful of us share a drawing every day before 11 am. The daily activity is new to me, but the people are friends. That is perfect too. We get human interaction which shows “how we’re doing” instead of telling it.

Stay well and find your own brand of social fun.

(*By accident I drew our gorgeous, petite young instructor as the comical rotund one and me as the gorgeous slim young thing. I tried to make “me” heavier but could not skinny-up our star.)