What if you found out that you had all the tools to handle the current pandemic?
No, this isn't an article on how to make hand sanitizer from unused spray tan, but as a dancer you have some important tools for getting through a challenge and finding the bright side.
Need proof? Read on.
Every seasoned social dancer understands one thing very clearly: The dance floor is as unpredictable as a highway. Rarely does a social dancer have a free and clear path to execute a pre-formatted sequence from one side of the floor to another.
You've got to adapt to the environment on the dance floor. A great dancer understands how to make adjustments, yield to other dancers, and where to best execute more advanced moves.
The Present Situation
The closure of all non-essential businesses and schools due to COVID-19 didn't just put most of our country into forced quarantine. It put us into forced adaptability.
As a high-touch, service industry, Arthur Murray Dance Studios across the world have adapted into a completely different business model: Digital dance lessons.
Not to mention, schools at every level, musicians, even Broadway shows have done the same.
Equally adaptive are the students, the heartbeat of every Arthur Murray dance studio, as they have tuned in to digital dance content from their homes to keep their progress, and enjoyment, alive.
The Bright Side
"Necessity is the mother of all invention", we've all heard that famous proverb, but the Oxford dictionary takes it further by stating "When the need for something becomes imperative, you are forced to find ways of getting or achieving it."
Families are learning to adapt to a life without school, for the time being, and maybe that will open up avenues for more digital engagement after this crisis has passed.
For dancers, it's no different. To learn in a different way is like a plant twisting, bending and stretching to find the sunlight.
Whether it's adding more digital content or just taking a fresh perspective on how we learn, the dance community is a picture-perfect example of the power of adaptability.
There are thousands of moments where a dance student is relying on their teacher. Not just for information purposes, but for trust. When you're outside of your comfort zone, you won't stay there unless you have a guide.
It's always easier to avoid the things we don't know how to do or aren't comfortable with. In a sense, you could hoard all the effort you would have used for trust. But you didn't.
Whether it was your first step into the studio, onto the dance floor, or through your first Magic Left Turn - trust was leveraged, confidence was gained, and your comfort zone was expanded.
It wasn't just requested, your trust was earned.
The Present Situation
In times of crisis, trust comes in many forms. Whether that's a phone call, text, or a smile, it helps put the people around you at ease.
During this current quarantine, we've seen it first-hand with an outpouring of support from our students, from neighbors, friends and relatives.
Considering the severity of Covid-19, it would be easy to withhold those things. It would be far easier to bunker in (no pun intended), blame others, stir up controversy and to use this all as a catalyst to end trust altogether.
Which is exactly why something as simple as a smile, a wave, or a nice message can mean so much.
The Bright Side
Think about this for a second: Has this Covid-19 prompted you to show compassion, support, or trust for others more than normal?
Think of human connection and trust as muscles and ask yourself, what would it take to make them stronger?
A challenge.
Studies have shown that people who do group exercise have a higher pain tolerance. They'll withstand more because the goal is collective. Covid is certainly the biggest challenge our world has faced in recent history but, because of that, it also can be the catalyst, a collective goal across the world.
With this mindset, it can strengthen our trust muscles, tone our social connections, and reinvigorate our community.
When it comes to your dancing, the sooner you can laugh about a mistake, the sooner you can enjoy the process of improvement.
That's not easy to do, but the rewards certainly outweigh the risk.
Laughter drops your guard, gives your ego's defense mechanisms a break, and allows your teacher to have unrestricted access to the next layer of your development.
The Present Situation
There's a really good chance that you're already medicating yourself with great shows, funny moments at home, and silly memes to offset the severity of what's going on. Wine helps too.
Call it gallows humor or just a temporary escape, a good laugh isn't just enjoyable - it's also good for you.
In an article by the Mayo clinic, their team found that laughter not only relieves tension but it can do everything from stimulating your internal organs to improving your immune system.
"Negative thoughts manifest into chemical reactions that can affect your body by bringing more stress into your system and decreasing your immunity. By contrast, positive thoughts can actually release neuropeptides that help fight stress and potentially more-serious illnesses."
- The Mayo Clinic Staff
The Bright Side
Considering the severity of everything in our world today, it would be easy to invest all of our energy in worry, stress, and fear. While a funny moment may be the last thing on your mind, that might be exactly the reason why you need to find it.
Learning to laugh, even through difficult times, is a skill that will keep you happy and healthy, whether that's a global pandemic or, on a much smaller scale, forgetting a dance step.
When you first started dancing, you showed up to the studio as an individual, seeking out a personal desire to learn how to dance. What you might never have expected, was the community of people that came along with your hobby.
Those people, from the staff that made you feel welcomed, to all the students that encouraged you have become your Arthur Murray tribe.
The Present Situation
The threat of losing our social connection has caused us to treasure those connections. The idea that a nationwide quarantine seems inevitable has made people value their neighborhoods, front yards, and neighbors a little more than usual.
All of those things were available before as day-to-day opportunities, but not nearly valued as high as when the threat of losing them is in front of us.
The Bright Side
Hopefully, if your Arthur Murray experience has given you dance skills you never thought you'd have, benefits you didn't know would be included, or a dance tribe you never expected you'd get, you'll read this next part carefully:
You are treasured by your studio.
Your support during times like these will certainly challenge your adaptability, stretch your trust, and may require a sense of humor through it all, but it will forge greater bonds and will never, not in another hundred years, be overlooked.
Your hobby intertwines with the careers of the professionals you have come to know as your dance tribe, and it's all glued together by a shared passion for dancing.
We don't often think of the world outside of our present situation. It's the same rationale that may have led you to believe that life was hopeless after a bad breakup in 8th grade... only to find the love of your life a few years later.
The same can be said about the current state of the world.
We can only see the reality we're presently in. This then makes it easy for your brain to use the present day as the rulebook for the future.
But let's think about this like dancers for a second. There was a point where you might have been convinced that dancing wasn't for you, that you were incapable of learning, or that you'd never have the current hobby that you have.
That non-dancing reality was real and completely accepted... up until you took the initiative to challenge it. That was the day when you chose the bright side, even if it wasn't readily available.
Despite all the warnings of the status quo, you were willing to trespass outside of your comfort zone to start taking lessons.
You see? You've already got a track record for positive change. You've already got the proof that you're capable of being a great support, to see this as an opportunity, and to share the benefits of finding the bright side.