Community in the Time of COVID-19

Yesterday in my cohort meeting, I heard from a speaker named Sandra about how her art communities have been moved online. Sandra lives in Miami and is a performance artist, educator, administrator, and choreographer who values the way exercise, and especially exercising with other people, positively impacts her mind and body. She shared how since corona began moving people inside, her dance classes have moved online in both national livestreams and more intimate zoom calls. While the livestream’s views have been increasing, she feels the zoom calls most successfully replicate what it feels like to be dancing together, even though it’s not the same. She said to check in with her after a couple more weeks to see how her students are responding and how it impacts participation.

When speaking about her own participation in her communities (yoga classes, pilates, other activities), she said that those spaces were times for her to socialize with different people and “sweat it out together.” But doing workouts on her own is much harder and isn’t the same thing; she’s had to learn how to “sweat it out” on her own. She felt like zoom most effectively brought back this feeling, but she’s also had to do some of her usual fitness activities on her own.

I relate to this because I have been exercising and training with a team every day after school for the past four years, and now I’m socially isolated and exercising on my own. It has made me realize how much the team part of training impacted my motivation, even when I was training alone toward a team goal. This week our track team also decided that we would do once a week intense workouts together to maintain the intensity of track practices without overloading during a stressful time. We had our first practice this week and it felt good to be “sweating it out together” again.