Have dancers battled through the pandemic?

By Olivia Snaith-Cairns

The coronavirus pandemic has affected many businesses and business owners throughout the United Kingdom. Some businesses have been affected to the point of closure, or very close to that point.

Arben Giga is an Albanian dancer, director and choreographer who is based in London. He, along with many other dancers, have widely been affected by the pandemic.

“Most of the shootings or sets or classes, or everything involved in dance has been postponed and put on hold, so that is something that all the dancers have been honing and waiting for, so yes it has affected the dance business a lot,” he said.

“The transition from being on the pandemic and having to be into the online world it wasn’t a big change for me. I mean, I just kept doing that more and focused on the online more.”

Giga has still been able to teach during the pandemic. “I put everything online, and I started teaching for different platforms before and then I created my own platform right now,” he said.

“So I created my membership and my customers from all around the world, so this is something that is positive to be able to do because before it wasn’t even in people’s mind to do something like that.

“It’s a loss because of course you miss the energy in the studio, you miss the energy of people and everything, but of course you need to carry on doing. I moved everything online, and it gave me an opportunity to actually reach people from all around the world, so that is something that is very nice and interesting to do, and I think I will keep going with my online training program.”

Giga is not alone. I have been dancing for 18 years now with a dancing school from my hometown. Due to the pandemic, I have not been able to dance properly since March 2020.

This hasn’t just taken a toll on my fitness; it has also affected my mental health as I miss dance a lot and haven’t been able to do any other exercise to do lack of space in my home.

I have joined online classes, and a few of Arben’s classes when there wasn’t a lockdown, which was nice to get back to the normal atmosphere that I’ve known my whole life.

Who knows when dancers will get back to dancing properly? For now, online classes and tutorials will have to do.