This week Noreen Wall, of Noreens Linedancers, has agreed to talk to us about the steps she has taken to continue line dancing through lock down.  Noreen teaches in Monmouthshire, in and around Chepstow.

Before lock down brought the line dance world to an abrupt halt Noreen was running 6 classes a week in 3 different venues in and around Chepstow, hosting an annual line dance weekend in Dawlish, assisting with the Chepstow Town Events Team to turn Chepstow into Nashville and running regular line dance socials for her dancers.

When it became clear that there was no other option but to postpone all classes Noreen recorded and put a few YouTube videos on to her Facebook group so that her dancers could continue to dance, as, like many others did, she thought lock down would only be for a few weeks.  Knowing that many of her dancers are older and also live alone, Noreen set up both Facebook messenger and WhatsApp chats to help keep them connected with each other.  This has now become an invaluable source of contact and comfort  to many of her dancers, especially those who are having to shield and haven't been able to leave their homes for weeks. 

Noreen very quickly came to the upsetting conclusion that she didn't have room in her house to dance and prepare videos to carry on teaching, and although she tried it, dancing outside didn't record well and there was no end in sight to lock down.  Noreen had been keeping in contact with other teachers, the ELD website and Line Dance Support Group but found that her inability to dance and deliver online content to her dancers in the way that other were meant that she began to struggle with the situation and stopped communicating in the chat groups she had set up.  Not long after this her husband, Rob, was furloughed, seeing the impact this was having on Noreen, he disappeared into their garage and spent his first week off transforming an area of the garage into a surprise dance area for Noreen!

After watching what other instructors were doing, and looking at the ELD tutorials, Noreen decided to have a go at going 'live' on Facebook,  She has found this quite easy to do, she streams directly to her private dancers group and has worked out that if she keeps the class to an hour and chants the steps over the music she has had very few problems, other than a few connection problems, which can't be avoided.  However, if you are attempting to go 'live' and are finding that you are still being muted or cut off, please check out the NEW streaming service available from Everything Line Dance.

As many other instructors do, Noreen is making use of the music library in the ELD member section and using alternative tracks to dance to too.

With no clear end to the lock down in sight, Noreen intends to continue to expand her knowledge of online teaching and the different ways of presenting this online content.  Dancing alone, together, might be our line dance life for quite some time to go, especially as so many dancers fall into the vulnerable category.

The last few blogs have really highlighted the impact that lock down is having on line dance teachers and how much they are focusing on their dancers and keeping them connected, despite the fact many of them had seen their main source of income disappear over night.  If you are a line dancer struggling at the moment, please don't suffer in silence, reach out, there will always be someone in our wonderful line dance world ready to help.