Dance has the moves to help beat pandemic blues

According to Guo, the Beijing Dance Academy has been offering online classes till September. In the beginning, it posed a great challenge for teachers since "dance is all about firsthand experience: standing in front of a mirror, moving in one space, and doing a performance together or some combination of all of the above".

"Both teachers and students tried hard to transit between the difference between online and face-to-face engagement. Fortunately, we did it well," says Guo, adding that the online classes also brought some surprising results, such as breaking the limitation of the space and inspiring students' creativity.

"Well, it's been very interesting, says Baptiste Bourgougnon, director of Undergraduate Programs and International Development of London Contemporary Dance School, during the forum."Because at first I really felt like we were going back to the drawing board in the sense that we all have, I think, as teachers habits that we fall into and plans that we use over and over again when we have a class and then suddenly all of this was gone and so I had to really rethink about all of those basic elements and what I want to work on or the students to work on, and so rethinking about this. It's a lot of thinking and preparing but it's been mostly fun and I think all other teachers have been saying the same thing. We've been enjoying the challenge."

According to Dr Lise Uytterhoeven, director of Dance Studies of London Contemporary Dance School, in March, the United Kingdom entered into lockdown as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While the school had to close its building, the school itself was far from "closed". The staff and teaching faculty immediately set to work to put in place an emergency online provision from March-July.

"We placed a focus on motivation, tuning the students into how they could keep motivated in this new reality. We also lead specific sessions on motivation with dance psychology experts," says Uytterhoeven.