I grabbed my dining room chair, latched it under my arm, and brought it to my bedroom. Then I changed out of my lounge wear and into something I’d sport on my way to the gym.
It was almost time for class.
I balanced my phone atop my bookshelf as I sifted through Instagram to find Erin S. Murray’s profile. I tapped on her profile photo and was instantly transported into her ballet class, live streamed from her home.
I placed my feet together, heel to heel, ready to warm up. I hadn’t taken a ballet class in a while, but placing my hand on the top of my chair felt like the barre: familiar. The repetition of movement brought me back to my favorite dance studio. And although I was alone in my room, there were over a hundred other dancers taking this class with me.
The closure of dance studios due to COVID-19 concerns sent many choreographers and dancers indoors, inspiring them to get creative in finding new ways to keep moving. Many have turned to live streaming to continue classes.
Murray is one such dancer. A choreographer and director who teaches a weekly basic ballet class at EDGE Performing Arts Center in Hollywood, Murray has gracefully dealt with her class cancellation by maintaining daily Instagram live classes.
Murray says she saw the wave of social isolation coming. Her boyfriend, who had been working in Italy during the early part of the year, returned to the U.S. due to the rise of coronavirus cases in Europe. She was early to self-isolate and turned to online classes to make up for lost time.
“I’m going to do a class every morning, and why not share it with other people? It was kind of a way to hold myself accountable to actually doing it,” she said.
Murray’s story holds true for many other dancers and performing artists as well. However, it isn’t just about lost classes; it is also about lost income. In addition to the cancellation of her class, the projects she had lined up in the coming months have also been cancelled or postponed.
Omari Wiles, Father of The House of Oricci in New York and founder of Les Ballets Afrik, teaches voguing classes with The House of Oricci through Skype. The classes are by donation, at a proposed rate of $5 to $10. Other studios and classes are accepting donations for their offerings as well.
“Right now, being isolated is definitely fearful because you don’t know where your next income is coming from,” Wiles said. “If you’re a dancer like myself, you’re reliable on tours and shows that are overseas, and all are cancelled.”
Even freelance dancers are reaching out to their followers for donations so they can afford everyday necessities during the pandemic.
“Right now, as struggling artists, the struggle is really, really real at this moment, and a dollar can go a long way,” Wiles said.
Also going a long way: the classes themselves. Beyond simply enabling dancers to keep moving, live streaming classes also provides a wide range of viewers with the ability to experience a dance class, perhaps even for the first time. According to Murray, newcomers to dance are more likely to participate in live streams because it eliminates the pressure of a dance studio environment.
“It’s shown me people are interested in this. It’s just that maybe people are more comfortable taking a ballet class when they never have before, in the privacy of their own home, because it doesn’t feel as vulnerable,” she said.
The ability to stream dance classes at home broadens the audience and provides dancers and choreographers with the opportunity to earn more donation-based income. But in the end, with or without the money, the sense of community and accessibility highlights the reason to keep going.
“I’m at the point where it’s not about the money, although I am trying to survive. I’m trying to make it accessible for as many people as possible,” Wiles said.
But for Murray, the motivations behind maintaining her beginning ballet class go beyond accessibility.
“I’m not teaching this class to make any of these beginners professional dancers,” Murray said. “If they come away from the class understanding one small aspect of ballet technique, or honestly just having 45 minutes or an hour of mentally escaping from all the chaos in the world right now, that’s more my goal than technique, necessarily.”
Katherine Disenhof, a dancer with NW Dance Project, was introduced to the myriad of live-streams when she noticed friends posting about classes they were taking. She got the idea to consolidate the overwhelming number of classes floating across Instagram into one handy source: Dancing Alone Together.
“I don’t want to have people spend their own hours lost in Instagram trying to find these things,” she said. “I think with all this free time people spend enough time on social media as it is. If I can be that central resource for people to quickly access all the floating pieces that are out there, I think I would have done my job successfully.”
Disenhof posts all the classes she gathers daily on her Instagram and on the Dancing Alone Together website. Instructors can also submit a Google form to make sure their classes are included.
The Dancing Alone Together Instagram page now has 26,300 followers, with more subscribing each day. According to Disenhof, the dance community was quick to catch on when they were ordered to stay home.
However, dancing at home isn’t a perfect solution. For USC dance major Juliette Ochoa, one major drawback is the lack of equipment. Ochoa takes ballet classes on Instagram from dance celebrities like Patricia Zhou and Tiler Peck to maintain her technique while in isolation. But she’s doing so in a small, carpeted room instead of on the sprung studio dance floor that she’s used to.
“My room is carpet, so trying to turn on carpet is hilarious,” she said. “The other flooring in my house is tile, so trying to do pointe work on tile is definitely a little scary and dangerous.”
What she does have in handy is a ballet barre. Her grandfather built one for her when she was younger and had it set aside, because before the pandemic she always had access to a studio. Now that she has to stay at home, she’s using it almost every day.
For Murray, dancing in isolation also raises concerns for possible injury, especially for those who are new to dance. Instructors can’t be as hands on as they can in the studio.
However, Murray has found that virtual interaction with students helps her with her teaching. People reach out to her through Instagram direct messages after the class to learn more about movements taught in class each day.
And just as Murray is connecting with her students, the whole dance world is joining together as well.
“I feel like the dance community has always been very strong,” Ochoa said. “But it is something where we are all going through the same thing.”
At the end of Murray’s class, I swipe out of the live stream and I return to my Instagram feed. Once again, I am alone in my room, no longer dancing with the hundreds of others that tuned in for ballet that morning. But what makes this moment different is the feeling that I am not in solitude. I am reminded of the feeling of being in a dance studio with people surrounding me, smiling and embracing movement.