Katrina runs Line Dance IOW on the Isle of Wight, with a background in Latin American and Ballroom and having trained in Ballet, Tap and Modern, she started Line Dancing in 2006 and progressed to teaching in 2007.  Before lock down, Katrina ran 8 classes a week teaching a complete range of dancers, from absolute beginners to advanced dancers, she held monthly social evenings and ran 1 or 2 live events a year too.  Alongside this Katrina is also a musician and teaches piano, with many of her students taking exams and some even going on to study music at university.

Like the rest of the dance world Katrina made the difficult but necessary decision in mid-March to close all her classes and put all her social events on hold.  As many other did, she found this first week challenging, but sensibly she had already been starting to think about ways she could continue dancing and keep all her dancers connected.  This meant that when the decision to close was made, she was able to let her dancers know some details about how the classes could continue online in the same message or phone call letting them know about the class closures. 

Before lock down Katrina had only had limited experience of creating and posting online video content, she says that transitioning to this new way of teaching has been a lot to learn, but that it  has got easier with practice.  She has found the tutorials on Everything Line Dance (they can be found on You Tube here) very helpful and it is reassuring to know that if there is something she is stuck with, the support is there.  Initially, Katrina found being in front of the camera quite daunting, as I am sure many of us did, but she now feels as comfortable teaching online as she does in person.  Her one tip to help her achieve this was to picture that all her dancers were in her kitchen with her dog!  By picturing those dancers that she was used to seeing every week, it helped her to forget the camera was there and act more naturally which she and her dancers feel makes for a more personal teach.  She has also found that some of her dancers have benefited from having the clock times on their walls, so that when there is a turn, they know where they need to end up – there’s no huge visual clue of ending up facing someone you shouldn’t be when you are dancing alone!. 

Katrina has set up a private  Facebook group  where she streams a live lesson Monday – Friday at 7pm.  Anyone is able to subscribe to her group which is excellent value and works out at only £1 per day, so please click on the link above if this is something you would like to do.  In addition to the live teach, which is later uploaded to the group,  Katrina posts daily videos of her revising older dances and teaching new ones too, in exactly the same way as she would do in class.  Her class have found the revision lessons particularly useful, as dancing on your own is a very different experience to being in a room full of people.  Every other Saturday she holds a fancy dress Facebook live social, with a quiz and the opportunity for her dancers to share their photos and what they have been up to in the week.  Katrina also hosts a weekly coffee morning on Zoom, as this means that everyone can see each other and really helps to keep her dancers connected.  On top of all this, she holds a special Sunday session every other week where she shows a performance recorded by a live artist specifically for her group.  Incredibly, with help from Billy Curtis, she was able to make this idea a reality the very first week of lock down with a performance from Glen Rogers and has since had recordings from Rob Childs and Natalie Thurlow  too.   Not only was this a huge morale boost for her dancers, giving them variety and the chance to dance their favourite dances at home, it is a way to support artists, many of whom also lost their main income stream over night too.  Being a musician herself, this is something Katrina feels very strongly about.

When social distancing measures are eased and classes are able to resume Katrina intends to continue making videos of the dances she teaches in class and is hopeful that some artists will continue to film short performances that she can easily incorporate into her normal social evenings.  This not only adds a new and exciting element to these evenings but will provide extra income for the artists.  In the mean time Katrina is more than embracing the opportunities that new technology is providing, allowing her dancers to stay connected, continue dancing and she plans to return with a BANG!

To view Katina's profile page on ELD click here