FARMINGTON — In what would have been a very busy competition and recital season, many young Utah dancers are just getting back to their studios.
Some are a little less conditioned and their routines aren’t quite as routine because they’ve spent the last two months practicing at home, with the help of virtual coaches and their sometimes nagging dance moms.
“I miss watching them onstage,” said Tammy Leavitt, of Farmington, who has four daughters enrolled in dance programs. The girls, at least the older three, typically spend 25 to 30 hours after school each week at the Creative Arts Academy in Bountiful.
And, to be honest, she doesn’t really have to nag them. The Leavitt girls love to dance and they stay on top of their schoolwork in order to have the time to work on their skill.
“This has kind of become our life,” Leavitt said, adding that she believes dancing has had a positive influence on her girls’ lives. And while a pandemic of the novel coronavirus has kept them homebound the last two months, it has only slightly dampened their style. The girls have helpful instructors and enough room in their home — or since Utah recently loosened restrictions, at their grandma’s racquetball court a block away from home — to mostly stay in shape.
“This has made them appreciate everything so much more,” Leavitt said. “Stepping back has made them realize what an important part of their life their instructors, their teammates and dance is. They have a greater appreciation for their art and what they’ve been training for all these years.”
The girls, like so many others in Utah right now, are missing out on competing, though, and keeping their fingers (and their twinkle toes) crossed that shows scheduled for the end of June and throughout July will go on.
Some studio owners, however, are modifying recitals to get them done. Another studio in Farmington is talking about having dancers perform on an open grassy field, while parents stay in their cars to cheer them on from the parking lot.
Allison Thornton, co-owner at The Dance Club in Orem, said it is good to be back at the studio, even if things are different.
“It’s like family here,” she said, adding that she thinks her dancers can make up for lost time.
Since May 11, the studio is operating on an altered schedule, staggering classes and limiting the number of kids in each class in order to maintain proper social distancing protocols as recommended by state and local health officials.
Instead of gathering in gaggles inside as they ready themselves for class, the dancers line up on marks 6 feet away from each other outside the door until an instructor greets them for class. Once inside, they have designated spots to stand and to put their things, also an effort to maintain social distancing.
Only occasionally, Thornton said, have they had to be reminded to stay on their mark.
Some students and parents, she said, aren’t ready to return to the social atmosphere just yet and have been sitting out until they feel safe, but still practicing with the group via online conference calls.
The studio typically has hundreds of dancers enrolled, but there are fewer at the moment, through all the uncertainty. Because of the competitive nature that dance is in Utah, Thornton said she’s given them until June 1 to decide what they want to do. Those spots, she said, will fill up quickly.
Through it all — not knowing if or when things will return to normal — the dancers have, for the most part, remained versatile.
“The kids have adapted really quickly,” Thornton said. “They’re resilient. They are really resilient and they can do hard things. And they come and they do whatever it takes and they jump right in.”
“They’re good kids,” she said. “They really want to succeed and they work hard.”