Hasn't the last few months been a rollercoaster ride?! Back in March, we didn't know whether we'd be able to keep running classes for our dancers at all, but, improbably, we did! It was truly amazing and humbling for us to be able to continue connecting with and teaching our dancers from home, and I am so grateful for our dance families, team and technology that made it possible to do so. You can see a little bit of our journey dancing through lockdown in the video below.
Although we were able to find a way forward, sadly not everyone was so lucky, and it is with sadness that I must tell you that unfortunately, we will not be able to return to our Norbury venue. Over lockdown, the Legion sold the building and so we arent able to resume Norbury classes at the moment. Likewise, our Brixton venue is not available to us yet either, and so we will only be running classes at our Streatham Venue on Prentis Road for the foreseeable future.
Now that we can reopen our in-person classes, our number one priority is keeping our attendees safe and making sure that we do our best to follow the guidelines in place for out of school, and fitness settings. Here are the most important things you need to know about the changes:
We must maintain 100 sq ft of space per person in our venues and as such in-person class capacity is capped at 12 dancers per class or six enrolees in our parent and child classes.
This means that dancers in independent lessons must be dropped off at the door and collected after their class has finished, and parents/carers must be on time.
The drop off rule may also affect trial classes, which may need to be attended online first before joining the lesson in person.
We will be running a hybrid of in-person and online classes so that our dance families who need to shield or isolate can still attend their lessons with minimal disruption.
Dancers must arrive ready wearing their dance uniform underneath their outside clothes so that the teachers can help get them prepared for class and dressed to go home again as quickly as possible. (I recommend ordering one of our hooded onesies from the school shop for this purpose.)
Classes for ages five years and up will be Socially Distanced where possible with class spaces marked out on the floor.
Class enrolments must be grouped in Bubbles. If your child was previously enrolled/wants to join multiple classes/styles per week, for the time being, they must enrol into a combo class to do this in person, or to choose one lesson to attend in person and all others to join online.
We have had to suspend in-person make-up classes until social distancing/bubbles are further relaxed. Make-up classes can only be booked to attend online.
We have scheduled time between each class bubble for our staff to clean and disinfect the facilities.
Hand sanitizing stations will be available, and our attendees and staff will be strongly encouraged to make liberal use of them.
Apart from all this serious stuff we are also working very hard to make sure our classes are still challenging, inspiring and most of all, FUN!
We are thrilled to be back and can't wait to see you all in class again soon!