So, when quarantine, first, happened, I...didn’t panic.
Which, is, uhm, it’s a rare thing for me- it’s new, it’s not rare, it’s a new thing for me; not panicking about a situation is new thing for me.
The sorta lake of calm that I sink into when things happen beyond my control is something that is a, uhm, growing aspect of my life. It’s growing with the understanding that I have^ absolutely, as much control over this moment as I have over every-other-moment which is... control is an illusion. I have the influence I can put into a situation but I don’t have |control| over it.
So...uhm, we went into lockdown and I was away from my family, I have, uhm, I had just started a job- a dream job, and y'know, tryna get my career to move in a particular direction... so it felt...- untethering when corona vi-/-when covid-19-/-coronavirus happened and we were locked down and then.I.was listening to like, castmates, listening to my friends, listening to my family and there was this ^despondency that was setting in, this feeling of being dragged down into the earth, almost and I... / I felt~compelled to do something, to help.
And...a need to take care of the people that have been gifted to me by God.
Uhm, uh, so the only thing I could think of that/- was taking care of me, taking care of myself, (because-you-have-to-take-care-of-yourself ^ you cannot give something that you don’t have, already. So I know I have to take care of myself) and then also extend that to everyone else that I’ve been gifted with. So, I know that, for me, when I am unhappy when I feel myself sinking, I dance. I dance, and, I feel happy after I dance.
I call dancing "happy juice" so-I-said to a few friends "oh I’m gonna just start doing dance sessions." Uhm, And you could sorta uh, !login and, join me-/-and, the-initial-idea was to do them over zoom (thatwasmyinitialidea) because Zoom was this new thing and we’re now chatting over Zoom and doing meetings over Zoom andallthatsortastuffandiwaslike "oh we could do that-" andtheni realized that ^my primary focus as well was to keep in touch with my !niece~, and... to... t'have... To know she is somewhere !giggling and !smiling, and I have two-nieces who are the-same-age and, so-when-I-say "my niece" I mean, both of them. Haherh!
S'just something to connect with them! and, uhm, I realized that they can’t connectwithus on Zoom and I really don’t want them connectingus on Zoom -/- connectingwithme on Zoom because...^ that’s an adult sphere, so...I don’t want them exposed to these adults, I don’t want them getting used to that^ issues of safety and stuff, andithought "Oh wait! I have this Youtube channel that I...started to upload like, a showreel on- ?years ago and thingslikethat. So why not make use of that? SoIjust-"Oh Youtube has a !streaming !service so I’ll just stream classes and it can be like, interactive 'cos they can !type into the !chat!" and that’s what we did.
I think from...?March or April-like since (virtually) since a coupla weeks into quarantine, couple or three weeks into quarantine, just started doing that and then-/-did it every week on a Wednesday at 5pm. And...because everyone was home~, everyone could attend. And I had a-a steady number of people that could attend class.
And-that’s-another-thing: I wasn’t calling them classes, I was calling them sessions because I didn’t feel confident saying I'm a teacher. Because, for me a teacher is, uhm... it’s a thing that’s earned. You-don’t-just-call-yourself-that-uhm-so, yeah!
I started doing dance sessions where we dance together. I just happened to be leading the sessions and...uh, Wednesday Evening Dance Sesh was !born, and then, we’re in England and so lockdown ended/- the first lockdown. We’re-now-of-course-heading-into-our-second-lockdown-this-evening... and which meant that people were goingbackto work and goingbackto school which is literally my entire class was goingbackto work and goingbackto school so they weren’t going to be able to attend 5pm sessions^ which. was/-
It happened uhm, at a sorta perfect time because I was feeling.../ what started off as a wonderful thing about logging on started to feel sad because fewer and fewer like- one person would say "oh I’m working that day" so one by one people were dropping out of the live streams ^so it made me feel sad that there was one-less-person coming to class, it felt like a, failure?
...
Yeah, it felt like a failure.
So I wanted to go to a more uhm, a more... open. sort of thing. And, I couldn’t shift, y’know like, “oh we’re gonna move it to Thursday." I didn’t want to do that, er- people were used to that day/ I was used to having Wednesday evening being the day the session happens. So I just moved it to prerecorded sessions, I send them out to a group of people, and then I put them on my socials, I put them on Twitter, I put them on Facebook, and anyone can, sort of hop on and watch and, uhm, my viewing numbers are in the !tens which is, !fantastic er- because er- I personally, know er- slightly. fewer. than. tens of people so I have !strangers watching !as well which is, which is quite nice.
But yeah, the sessions are/- have-always-been-about just a moment of... joy and doing something physical that requires your concentration, that requires you to do something with your body that you didn't-think-you-can-do-but-you-actually-can-do, it's just how you do it is individual and… yeah!
They’re about...for a moment, |feeding|, life, and joy and encouragement into your body and that’s it. Just/-That’s literally it.
If there’s something, the isolation and the fear and the uncertainty that is pervasive at this moment-of-our-life has taught me, it is that, it IS literally, AS important to be purposefully joyful as it is to drink water.
And to make sure you get some sun.
It is as important to do those things, because they |feed|, they-literally |feed| health, into your bones, into your life.
So I hope that Dance Sesh is that. I mean, there are uhm, I’m on season two, which-is-what-I-called-it and we are learning how to !twerk or how to phequzela in my language which means, literally that: to shake your !arse.
so I’m already trying to figure out what the next season is gonna be like. SO yeah, go ahead, go check out my channel uhm, I think you’re gonna put my socials on here, so people are gonna check out my channel !hopefully and just have abitofa dance. It’s literally about that, there are no rules, there is not perfect way to do anything and the idea of perfection is two things, to me:
Perfection is boring.
And perfection is impossible.
And striving for it is... unnecessary. I think, strongly, firmly what we should strive to be is...the kind of human being other human beings are safe around and the very best way to do that is to^
strive to be as much of yourself as you can be.
And... that will make you someone other people want to be around, because, (quite frankly), you’d be someone you want to be around.