By Morgan Allen
After months of dancing from their living rooms, garages, and kitchens, students in the UC Santa Barbara Dance program have been given the opportunity to step back into the studios on campus.
With many new safety protocols in place to protect against the spread of COVID-19, the dance program has created hybrid Zoom and in-person dance classes, giving their students the chance to either take dance class in small, socially distanced groups, or over Zoom from their homes.
UC Santa Barbara dance majors in Christina Sanchez’s hybrid modern dance class, which takes place simultaneously in studio and on Zoom.
“We are learning to adapt and pivot within a constant state of change. We have been humbled but also strengthened both as dancers and as human beings,” said Christina Sanchez, one of the instructors who taking on the challenge of teaching hybrid, in-person dance classes.
Being back with her students in the studios again, watching them mold back into their element and doing what they love, has made all the challenges they have endured worth every second, Sanchez said.
When COVID-19 shut down in-person classes in March 2020, the UCSB dance faculty began to brainstorm ways in which the program could adapt to social distancing. At first, there were many unknowns, as teaching a dance class online was a foreign concept.
Yet by last fall, the department had developed a new type of hybrid class. Dancers attending these classes must take strict precautions, such as weekly required COVID-19 tests and wearing masks in the studios at all times. Since then, the dance program has successfully offered the option to its students, running eight in-person classes during the winter term.
These hybrid classes allow students to choose each day whether they want to come to the studios on campus and take the class in-person, or join the class over Zoom on their computers from home. Students often will take class from home if they do not feel comfortable coming into the studios, need to protect others they live with, or are away from Santa Barbara.
UC Santa Barbara dance majors in Christina Sanchez’s in-person modern dance class.
Students who come in-person are split up into separate pods of four to five dancers, and are placed in one of the four studios in the dance buildings on campus. The dance teacher is stationed in one of these studios, and the pods of students rotate every class to allow all students the opportunity to be in the studio with the teacher. Each class, the teacher starts a Zoom from their studio and students join from the screens in the other studios, or from their computers at home, and take class, following the teacher’s instruction via the screen.
Sanchez began teaching hybrid modern dance classes in fall 2020 and learned in the process, through trial and error, how to successfully adapt her classes to accommodate all her students.
She strives to unite her dancers, both in-person and on Zoom, while recognizing the extreme privilege of being able to teach classes during a pandemic when so many other types of classes are not able to meet. She currently has 21 students enrolled in her class, with most of them taking the class in-person, and a few taking the class through Zoom.
“I am very appreciative that we are able to attend class in-person, and because of this it gives me a sense of normality and freedom,” said dancer Abby Lesole, one of Sanchez’s modern dance students.
“Christina Sanchez is such a bright teacher,” said Ezra Spencer, another one of Sanchez’s students. “Having any in-person classes is priceless and she knows how to bring out both calm and fierce energy from her students.”
Morgan Allen is a third-year double major in sociology and dance at UC Santa Barbara who is pursuing a minor in professional writing. She wrote this for her Writing Program course Journalism for Web and Social Media.