I don’t know how, exactly, but this online encyclopaeda of the Spanish Flu pandemic in the US (1918) might be useful.*
Information is organised in a range of ways, but you can do a search for ‘dance halls’ and see newspaper articles about public dances being closed because PANDEMIC.
*I just have this niggley feeling that this historic example could be useful/interesting in the contemporary context…
Now we’re opening up in Sydney, I’m seeing an (understandable) impatience to ‘return to normal dancing’ that has some problems. People pushing to social dance in public bars, talk that normalises dancing, misreading public health guidelines in ways that support their POV. After all, to _have_ social dancing, individuals need dance partners. As many as possible.
A consequence of this public talk has been an increasing ‘normalising’ of the idea that it’s fine to ‘return to normal’ dancing. If enough people are talking about whether the band is playing at x venue, or what time doors open at y venue, the more marginalised questions like ‘is it _safe_ to dance at all?’ become.
A big challenge for fb group moderators has been dealing with these complex social and medical issues while themselves under covid stress. It’s hard to parse the govt’s covidsafe info and public health restrictions, it’s even harder to do that _and_ juggle your own worries about safety, the increasing frustrations and arguments of other people, _and_ a year of shitty stress. Tensions are high, and there’s no clear model for handling these issues.
Or is there?
This is a fascinating article about the role of internet discussion boards in the gay community during the AIDS crisis. There’s a chunk about how these were moderated to prevent the spread of misinformation, and to encourage collaboration.
Can we social dance YET?!
I am not an epidemiologist or the boss of covid. BUT. I have been keeping an eye out.
The rules have changed (as of Monday 7th Dec), and yes, we can dance! But still:
NO TOUCHY.
It totally sucks, but not as much as dying of covid or killing your nanna with the rona! Be strong, my friends – it won’t be long now, as long as we DON’T have an outbreak!
The rules are:
DANCE FLOORS (nightclubs, venues, etc)
1 person per 4 square metres
maximum of 50 people on indoor dance floors, or 500 people outdoors.
VENUES
1 person per 2 square metres IF there are more than 25 people in the venue (no density rules for <25 people)
kiddies count as people!
But can we touch one other person who is our ONLY dance partner and also in our bubble, with NO partner swapping?
The NSW gov rules say NO TOUCHY for public events, but it's not entirely clear.
Source
Note RE this photo: it’s 4m SQUARE metres per ibis, not 4m between each bin chicken.
So if 3 ibis want to dance, the dance floor/bin must be 12 square metres!
It’s still very high risk, because:
…and so on. This is why the actual _class_ is high risk. All this, and then the business has to handle contact tracing and other covidsafe regulations. The teaching model that was happening before covid barely (if ever) managed to handle insurance and other safety stuff. This added layer of work is too much for most dance businesses.
But in addition, the businesses that ran classes before have all been devastated by the shutdowns. No support from the government means businesses have failed or had to close down. Teachers have had to look for other work. So the _businesses_ have had to pause.
There’s no money to fund class expenses: advertising, insurance, rent/room hire, etc etc. All dance classes take a financial risk on this stuff, and then if numbers aren’t solid, they make a loss. Solo jazz has always been a higher financial risk because it doesn’t attract as many students as lindy hop.
I’ve run a dance business, and taught for my own business and others. Including the first weekly solo jazz class in Australia (brag! brag!). At this stage the safety issues of covid are a big deterrent, but it’s all the other administrative issues that are the real killer. We don’t make much money from single classes; to make money you have to run a bunch of classes and/or big classes. That’s not going to happen during this moment.
But hold on. We need a vaccine, and we need 100% take up, before we start teaching classes safely.
Things you can do to get lindy hop happening again:
Someone on fb recently asked:
“Question: has someone made a visual timeline/lineage of Lindy Hop? Is this a good idea?”
I dislike the linear timeline model because:
There are other, far more interesting notions of ‘time’. The Aboriginal idea of the Dreaming is a good one: it is now, then, to come, and always. So, eg, when we tell a creating Dreaming story/dance/song, we are at once telling history and engaging in that act of creating as well.
If we take this way of understanding (the assumption that time needn’t be linear) to jazz dance, we have multiple dances existing at the same time in different and the same spaces. Specific shapes move through time and between generations, but are also moving laterally between siblings of different ages. So different aged people dance the same movements at the same time, but it has different meanings, depending on who is dancing where.
If we use a linear model, elders are in the past, superseded by successive generations of ‘improvers’, all focussed on a single point/form in time: lindy hop.
But we know it doesn’t work like that. Frankie teaching a bunch of white people the electric slide to Easy Does It, at the same time (day, even!) Black families might be dancing it to disco at a party. White people may separate generations and social spaces and learning, but other cultures do not.
So i say no to time _lines_, because they force western ideas and hierarchies of meaning onto Black culture.
It’s more useful to get up and dance, and feel those changes. Or to think of those dancers from all over Africa leaping up to share a step like the ones Al and Leon were demonstrating, all of them ignoring Marshall Stearns’ voice, and sharing ideas and feelings in a single moment of inter-continental, cross-generational immanence.
Africa isn’t in the roots of lindy hop. The nations of Africa are dancing now, in conversation with lindy hop.
tldr;
1) Keep your goobs at home with you.
2) Don’t visit other people, or invite them (and their goobs) to your indoor gathering.
3) Stay 1.5m away from other humans.
4) NO TOUCHY (don’t touch your face, don’t touch your mask, don’t touch other people).
Masks
If you do wear a mask, you’re going to need to be five times as careful with these things:
– Don’t touch your freaking face (NO TOUCHY)
– Wash your hands like a raccoon (ie properly, and before you want to touch anything else)
– Learn how to put your mask on and off properly, and when you’re wearing it. NO TOUCHY. Don’t touch your mask.
treat the rona like glitter.
aerosol vs droplets.
Why wear a mask?
If it’s in your local community (your workplace, your household), masks can help you stop spreading it around.
If it’s not there yet, washing your hands, distancing, staying away from people is the BEST thing you can do.
Covid is spread by respiratory droplets. It lives in the gooby wetness inside your lovely warm, wet body.
When you breathe, cough, sneeze, sing, shout, snort, laugh, goobs of liquid come out of your big face holes (nose, mouth), and the teeny tiny virus comes out in it. Goobs can travel about 1.5m. More if you put some effort into it.
The virus travels around with you inside your body, visiting your friends and going shopping, patting puppers and laughing at jokes. Once you spit it out, the virus dies after a few hours (like, 24 hours or more). But in those hours it makes friends with other people and gets into their warm, wet bodies.
The point of a mask is to mop up the nose and mouth goobs that come out of your face. They get stuck in the mask. Then you throw the mask in the bin (CAREFULLY) or you wash it (CAREFULLY).
Your mask has to fit well so it can’t ‘leak’ goobs (coughs, sneezes, whuffing big sighs) out the side or bottom.
If you touch your mask that’s got goobs on it (even goobs you can’t feel), the goobs are on your skin. Then you touch a friend and get goobs on them. Or you touch a door knob and put goobs on it.
(Rule no.1: NO TOUCHY)
Masks don’t stop you _getting_ viruses, they stop you _giving_ viruses.
The biggest challenge with masks, is that most people don’t wear them properly, have them properly fitted, or put them on/off properly. In fact, there’s some speculation that mask wearing results in people touching their faces _more_ than usual.
Workplaces are where COVID is spreading in Australia. Not at the park or in the shops.
But in meat packing plants, aged care homes. Places where the pay is bad, and the work is hard. And the industry is not properly regulated.
If you really do want to get angry about covid, get really angry about:
– Jobs shifting from permanent full time to casual (removing workers’ access to sick days and the ability to take time off when they’re sick);
– The price of childcare (that forces women to work excessive hours just to pay the bills);
– Wage theft (where bosses don’t pay workers their full pay);
– The privatisation of public services like aged care facilities.
All these things put vulnerable workers (people on low incomes in jobs they could lose with no notice) at risk. They have to go to work because they’re desperate for money. Even if they’re sick. Even if their boss won’t let them distance properly, wash properly, or wear masks.
These workers often have more than one job. So they double their risks as they enter two workplaces. And they have dependent families (parents, grandparents, children).
And a note: you can bet your bottom dollar that that shirt you bought at Gorman or those socks you bought at Kmart weren’t manufactured in safe factories.
Australians*: please don’t get your rage on about people not wearing masks. I know you’re afraid. But the people who will suffer most from aggressive mask policing are not random white people at Bunnings. It will be the poor and homeless, Blak kids and migrant workers.
If you feel the urge to rantpost about masks, have a look at this great image, and allow yourself a moment to let the rage leak out like a long, squeaky fart.
And remember to wash your hands, not touch your face, and keep 2m between you and other people.
*same for you too, probably USA people. And also Black Lives Matter.
Soccer update: pitch filled with intimidating tween Matildas, so kicked in the park. Got pooped on by a bird. Dog still scared of ball.
If we talk about Bunnings woman not wearing a mask, we’re not talking about working conditions for Bunnings staff.