Why Is Non-Contact Dance Indoors Prohibited?
Is indoors or outdoors really the safety-defining feature of sports in a pandemic?
Craving for contact, longing for learning, daring to dance. During lockdown I spoke with two amazing ladies who dedicate themselves to supporting others with movement, dance, and compassion. Under UK government regulations, outdoor sports are allowed with any number of people but indoor group exercise like dance are prohibited.
If cheerleaders were in charge of the nation’s coronavirus response: “Don’t touch your face, don’t touch your hair, don’t pull on your shorts…..I can get 30 kids regimented, not touching.” Helen, Enigma Cheer
Cheerleading and aerial fitness are inclusive, challenging and fulfilling sports. What does ‘cheerleading’ make you think of? For many, their first image comes from American movies, bitchy pretty teenage girls going out with guys in the football team. In reality, Enigma Cheer characterises it as “gymnastics and weightlifting people while moving around”. Cheerleading teaches you the mechanics of how to lift, throw, and catch people. The cheerleading community is very inclusive, accepting boys, girls, anything in between, able, disabled and those with sensory issues. Helen coaches cheer with people as young as three all the way up to 50-years young. Aerial fitness at the Flight Lab includes pole, hoop, silks and yoga. Aerial hoop and silk dancers are suspended, rotating while the pole requires minimal clothing for the skin contact that keeps dancers on the pole. All require enormous strength– imagine doing a continuous pull up upside down, moving. Leaders in these sports create environments where people come to forget the rest of the world and have skilled coaches help them improve their physical skills, nurture confidence and most of all, have fun.
“We turn women into ninjas.” Clare, Flight Lab
Out of the limelight, these lesser-known sports battle against taboos and ignorance for better recognition and understanding. Flight Lab grew over 500% in its first year, outgrew their first facility quickly and in 2020 was nominated for an Xpert Industry award. Despite being the largest operational aerial facility in the region, Flight Lab remains off the media radar — pole-sports are basically strippers, right? Meanwhile, cheerleading is often considered as gymnastics, which results in suspicion following all the controversy that sport has seen in recent years. Para-cheer team England are world champions who — despite their successes — still have to fully self-fund their training, travel and competition costs.
Under government regulations in 2020’s lockdown and now in the two high alert tiers, indoor sports for adults are not allowed. When England went into lockdown, leaders in these sports acted creatively to keep going and maintain connections online. Only 10% of members of Flight Lab’s members had poles at home so they rented out equipment from their facility. They froze memberships for those who could not continue, doubled the amount of membership options available, and did all they could to stay connected and provide emotional support — quizzes, hair and beauty tips and a range of classes online. Enigma Cheer offered online sessions to “keep you fit, active, and ready to return to sport”. With all indoor sports grouped together, the decision-making powers appear to lack the knowledge of individual sports to make nuanced decisions reflecting the different ways these sports operate.
“We feel we are in control — we know who is where — this is normal.”
Skills developed in cheerleading and aerial fitness naturally support heath, well-being, and social distancing. Spatial awareness, body conditioning, and conscious movement — these are the fundamentals of effective social distancing and reducing virus transmission. Many of the practices within these sports were ‘COVID-secure’ well-before coronavirus hit. Poles are positioned to allow dancers to spin around them without hitting into each other and are cleaned between users. Cheerleading already had extensive safeguarding regulations in place — the whereabouts of each individual is always known, nobody leaves without permission and there are always at least two coaches. Social distancing requires the controlled movement of bodies in relation to one another; during this pandemic, perhaps dance classes should be mandatory, not banned.
Even with the limitations of coronavirus, coaches can facilitate positive transformation through movement and dance — if allowed to. Equipment used must be sanitised between each user. Flight Lab stripped their hoops of grip-tape to be able to effectively clean them. The fabric used in hammocks for aerial yoga needs to go through the washing machine at high temperature then dried between each use, making it next to impossible to continue teaching this discipline. Stunting in cheerleading is limited or altered to avoid human contact — instead of the top of a human pyramid standing on the hands of others, the bases can support the flyer on top of a crash-mat base. Enigma Cheer has 15-minutes between each session to ensure appropriate cleaning and stagger arrivals and departures. To meet appropriate health and safety standards during the pandemic, certain practices change while others have to be stopped entirely.
Dance feeds my soul
The benefits of dance for mental and physical wellbeing should be available to those who want to practice together. Now more than ever, we need places and people in all communities to care for one another. Organising cheerleading enables Helen to care for many people. Though the reality of coronavirus places limits on us, when a leading practitioner can demonstrate their safety standards, shouldn’t adults be able to make their own decisions about the risks involved? Aerial fitness and cheerleading are both ways that humans can develop connection energetically while maintaining physical distance. When coaches adjust their practices and make their protocols clear, these environments can continue to provide the safe-space — physically and emotionally — that leaders like Helen and Clare have worked so hard for. Dance, play, music, sharing — joy in our lives is central to our health. Non-contact dance indoors can be COVID-secure — let us dance apart together!
Thank you to Helen from Enigma Cheer (Ipswich) and Clare from The Flight Lab (Bury St. Edmunds) for sharing their time, insight and super-powers through dance and movement.
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