Milwaukee’s bustling arts scene has seen setbacks along with the rest of the world due to COVID-19. Danceworks a nonprofit dance company and studio in Milwaukee has offered people, like me, the opportunities to attend one class, an entire lifetime of classes or to watch a performance. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused Danceworks and Amy Brinkman-Sustache their director of education, to readjust and get creative in continuing to offer Milwaukee opportunities to dance and move. Off the Cuff caught up with her to see how the transition is going and what the future of Danceworks look like.
How are online classes working?
Right now, we are not doing the traditional online class. We’ve been doing Livestream classes on Facebook. Basically that’s one way, we teach the class but we can’t see students. We can’t give feedback and all of that. Starting mid-June, we are shifting to a platform, we haven’t quite decided yet if it is going to be a one way, like the live stream, where you only see the instructor or we do it the other way where we can see the students too. We have been doing a test run this week with a new feature on our studio software, called Mindbody live stream.
Right now, to this point how it has been working is we have a schedule that we send out every week via email and social media.
There are a range of classes, right now only three instructors have been offering classes during the week, varying styles and levels. People have been very receptive to it and very appreciative for the opportunity to keep moving and stay connected to their friends--even if it is virtually. At this point, they can’t see each other but they have been commenting and staying connected that way.
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The thing that they can do even though it is one way is we are encouraging students to post questions. They can say things like, “That exercise was very good. I didn’t understand how you did it.” So, they are able to ask questions in real-time. In most circumstances, we are able to respond to those questions. At this point, it has been just a one-way interaction. The next step would be able to go to a platform that can do both ways. We’ve been experimenting with Zoom and things like that.
The challenge with dance is, for example, this week I had a test run with a new platform that allows me to see the students, but what happens is you have to be far enough away from the camera so that the students can see your whole body and you can see their whole bodies. When you are that far away you can’t really see what they are doing because the boxes are so small. You can’t really give feedback that way. In order, to answer anybody’s questions you have to move to the camera speak to them, have them ask a question, move back to your spot for dancing, show it there, show what you are trying to show, and then you can move back to the camera and ask them to demonstrate to see if they understood what your correction was.
That is how it has been going and we have just been doing, ‘pay what you will’ by donation. We are asking them to pay what they will and we are asking them to support us in other ways, such as sharing the schedule, sharing the videos, sharing posts, starting a watch party basically just getting the word our about Dance works, so we can build both our student population and our future audience for when we get back into the theater.
Can you speak specifically on the kind of response you have gotten from your teachers and your students?
The response has been very positive people are really appreciative of the opportunity to keep moving and they have come to really rely on it. Especially, one of our most popular classes which is a bar workout class. We have been offering it at least five times a week, so people put it in their schedule they are scheduling these things. We also have been doing more casual classes. We do a dance party every other week. We did the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s and the early 2000s. That is more or less for an entire family to participate in. They can just push their furniture back. It is not technique biased. Just some really fun jams that they can dance to. We have been doing stuff like that to include the whole family. We had a really great response on that as well.
As you can imagine, early on in the quarantine we got a huge response financially. People were really wanting to keep these classes on the schedule. People have been responding in a really positive way both with their comments and support on financial media but also financially.
What are you most excited about while switching onto an online platform?
The really great thing about doing the online classes on Facebook is that we were able to reach so many more people than we imagined. We have our regular student base here in Milwaukee, but we were also getting people who were taking a class with us from Chicago, New York, Philadelphia all over the place. Friends here were inviting other friends to class with them virtually. That is kind of the reason we did it on social media first even though we didn’t charge for that. We decided to do it that way so we could cast a wider net. If we do it online for a paid platform it really does limit that. It goes back to a studio setting where somebody registers and pays for a class. We have taken those first eight to nine weeks to reach out, and hopefully, when we go to a paid platform for online classes we are able to include people who normally would not be able to take class with us in Milwaukee. We now gained a lot of students who really like our classes and who never have had the opportunity to travel back and forth. It has been really great to build our community.
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The other thing that has been great it is difficult for the performing arts to be virtual but it is also the compilation of people who are the most creative and can make something out of nothing. We are getting better at it every week. The thing I look forward to the most about being online is to reach people we normally wouldn’t be able to reach.
Some professional dancers, such as Isabella Boylston, have been offering a free option how are you responding and comparing to that?
For the last nine weeks, all of our classes have been free. They have been on Facebook so they are free and open to the public. As you probably already know, even if you don’t have a Facebook account you can still go, because our page is public, we are a nonprofit organization. The other thing we have been doing since all the lessons are on Facebook they are recorded so they live on our page. We have been putting them on our website as well, so people have access to them after the lessons are over too.
As a teacher, I specifically gear the classes to who is in the class. I have a lesson plan when I go in, but then all the sudden I realize that this technique or phrase or movement is difficult so we are going to spend more time on it then my lesson plan allows. You just go with the flow.
When you are teaching one-sided, without the students in the room it is hard to do that because you don’t know what they are getting and not getting. You just kind of put it out there, but then you remind them that they can go back and watch this video literally thousands of times and keep working on the thing that was difficult for them.
What we are finding from students is they are able to do that. In a normal classroom setting, I am sure you have experienced this too, students are sometimes afraid to ask questions. They don’t want to be the person to hold up the class. So the thing that they are able to do is go back and keep looking at these videos until they are able to accomplish the thing in the class they couldn’t do. We are hearing from students that they are becoming stronger dancers. They are limited in their space and in one on one contact, but they are actually able to accomplish more in steps. For me, I teach a lot of tap so working on specific steps or series of steps, students have been saying, “I am now able to get it because they can go back and watch it a million times while in class they are afraid to have you do it over and over again for them.
What do you think the lasting effects of COVID-19 on Danceworks and the dance world in general?
That is a really tough question. I am going to stay on the positive tip. Instead of saying that we are going to have less students, we are going to have less audience, it is hard to know. There are a lot of places opening back up right now and maintaining their class sizes. Right now, we are not feeling comfortable doing in-person classes or performances.
I am going to hope that the lasting effects will be an appreciation. An appreciation for what was and what will be again. An appreciation for the performing arts—every media of it. The things we take for granted. when we go, “what do you want to do today?” “Oh, dance works has a concert let’s go and check it out.” That’s not there anymore. I would hope that it is an appreciation and an outlook that is very positive for the arts in general when we get back up.
I don’t know if you saw the Milwaukee Exquisite Corpse video which is a lot of dancers from Milwaukee, 45 dancers, who made this video. There is a lot of that stuff. The money from the donations that were made because of that video was split between the artist. Imagine MKE has been supporting artists. The support that the artists have received, not to say they aren’t struggling anymore, but the support and community have been great. The two things I would say are the appreciation for the arts in general—when they are not there you miss and appreciate them—and the bringing of the community together—I think that is going to last past this pandemic.
