Lost Physical Connection During The Pandemic Sparks Increased Passion For Social Dance

Upper West Side NY

28 October, 2021

12:36 PM

Description

Columbia Daily Spectator BY LAURA JIANG OCTOBER 25, 2021 Two steps forward. One step back. Partners meet each other's gazes as they perfectly sync their energized steps with the music, bodies close together. Swooping past other partners, sliding across the slick floor, dancers drift into an evening of social dance with fluidity and focus. For the first time since March 2020, Lerner Hall is once again filled with the rhythmic music and steps of ballroom dancing at night. Coming into this school year, despite having to work around indoor gathering limitations, social dance groups have been able to hold in-person classes and practices in which dancers are partnering up again, reviving the social aspect of dance that was lost while dancing isolated over Zoom. "A lot of what's really cool about social dancing is that you can feel each other physically responding to a lead or a follow," Columbia University Ballroom secretary Tim Wang, SEAS '23, said. "While Zoom sessions are obviously better than nothing, you can't really compare it to an actual physical experience of being there with a partner." The challenge that Zoom presented within the social dance community is not simply the lack of partners but also the lack of instructors, who help dancers improve on their technique. Richard Dai, a graduate student in the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the president of Columbia Tango, and his partner felt vulnerable to reinforcing mistakes since despite being able to dance in Dai's apartment, they lacked direct feedback from instructors. The absence of live and direct instruction from coaches also made it hard to maintain engagement within the community. The return of social dancing has helped CU Ballroom recover its community by welcoming both returning and new dancers this semester. While Wang expressed the relief returning members felt to be able to hit the dance floor again, he also observed an unexpectedly high level of engagement from new dancers. "We came into this year with a level of passion from new dancers that we weren't expecting and that's been a really fantastic surprise," Wang said. Dai also noticed that Columbia Tango experienced the same trend in new dancer engagement. He pinpointed the loss of social contact during the pandemic as the reason for the appeal of social dancing. "I think everyone's kind of starved for social contact, ever since the pandemic. So simply dancing like tango is definitely a big attraction for them," Dai said. Wang and CU Ballroom leaders entered this school year concerned that the pandemic would decrease members' comfort with partner dancing. After classes started, Wang said that, in general, people responded well to being able to dance closely with their partners. Ana-Sofia Rico Rozo, BC '24, a new member of Sabor, Columbia's premier Latinx dance troupe, decided to audition this year because of the return of in-person practices and performances. "The proximity, or the physical contact that you get with a person, that sparks a lot of emotions— excitement," Rozo said. "It can also be embarrassing because you don't know what you're doing." Wang commented on how quickly the nerves go away for new dancers despite going through a phase of feeling like they have two left feet. "Once [new dancers] finally take that step of joining and being like, 'OK I want to do this,' they very quickly go from that sense of apprehension to just straight up enjoying the dancing, enjoying dancing with someone else and, even if they do make a mistake, just laughing about it with their partner," Wang said. While dancers enjoy the gradual return of the social dance scene, Columbia's volatile COVID-19 protocols and guidelines still present many concerns. Soon after clubs began to meet in September, an indoor gathering capacity limit forced ballroom dance clubs to rethink their original plans for their first classes. CU Ballroom put in place a waitlist for classes, which in previous years were open to all. Columbia Tango hosted outdoor events, like a dance class at the Sundial that was open to all. CU Ballroom's return to full strength has also been delayed due to the cancellation of competitions. The club has been spending time preparing for their first competition at Brown University, originally scheduled to take place at the end of the month. On Oct. 19, the club was suddenly made aware of the cancellation of the competition due to Brown's changing university guidelines. "It just came as a shock to a lot of us," Wang said. "A lot of us are not really sure what to do now that basically there are no more collegiate competitions for the first semester." Columbia, on the other hand, is lifting its indoor capacity restriction, which may allow Columbia Ballroom to host more dancers for class, taking dancers off the waitlist. The unpredictability of administrative policies regarding gathering size will remain a factor of uncertainty that social dance groups will have to continuously adapt to. Wang sees a silver lining in it, though, noting how the changing guidelines have made the club more tight-knit because club officers need to be more responsive. Despite not being fully back to its pre-pandemic strength, ballroom dancers can experience the joy of the dance floor to a much greater degree than in the previous three semesters. The atmosphere of social dancing is created only through people dancing with complete focus on their partners, surrounded by other couples, getting lost in the music, and experiencing the physical feeling between the lead and the follow. "I remember coming in, and we were already dancing super close during the workshops, and it didn't feel weird, it was more of like [an] 'I'm back home' type of sensation," Rico Rozo said. "This feels good. I'm glad this is happening again." Staff writer Laura Jiang can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow Spectator on Twitter @ColumbiaSpec. Founded in 1877, the Columbia Daily Spectator is the independent undergraduate newspaper of Columbia University, serving thousands of readers in Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and beyond. Read more at columbiaspectator.com and donate here.