Adapting: Dance students, teachers adjust to life during coronavirus pandemic

Editor’s note: Adapting is a regular series spotlighting the ways the global coronavirus pandemic is changing the everyday lives of people in Western Pennsylvania.

Nine months ago, Isabel Ganovsky and her fellow senior dance majors at North Carolina’s Elon University started planning their senior thesis project.

“We chose to create a mock dance company, to fundraise, do outreach and create a performance,” said Ganovsky, 21, who grew up in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood. “We wrote grants, we raised money, we cast our pieces and did all of these things.”

Less than three weeks before their April 17 performance, however, the members of the “Perception Dance Company” were told they’d have to find another way to stage the performance, with colleges nationwide shutting down their campuses as the coronavirus pandemic ramped up.

After some frantic logistical coordination, Ganovsky is back home in Squirrel Hill, where she filmed her solo performance for what will now be a virtual senior recital livestreamed on YouTube.

Filming on her iPhone, Ganovsky took advantage of the lack of traffic in Downtown Pittsburgh to get some early morning shots on the city’s iconic bridges and in the city’s Oakland and Greenfield neighborhoods.

“I thought it would make for some interesting architecture and landscape in the background,” she said.

Her planned performance, titled “This Is All I Have,” explores lonely settings that depict an isolated world, she said. “Working alone, I aim to find newfound freedom in movement while coping with quarantine and the nostalgia of being home,” she explains in the Perception Dance Company’s promotional program for the livestreamed recital.

Ganovsky and two of her classmates have a little experience in shooting and editing video, but for most of them, not only were they reconfiguring their senior recital, they also got a crash course in DIY filmmaking.

“I’m lucky enough to also be a communications major, so I do have a lot of experience with film editing, but a lot of us don’t,” she said. “So, we’re kind of just helping each other out, since we were truly kind of just thrown into this.”

Just a couple of exits up the Parkway East, dance teacher Lauren McKee of Swissvale also found her dancing world spinning off its axis.

“The first couple weeks were genuinely terrifying, because I didn’t think there would be any work for me,” said McKee, 28. “So, as time went on, it was really amazing to see how many employers were able to come up with a different plan and a new ‘normal’ instead of just canceling classes.”

McKee is the creative movement instructor at the Ballet Academy of Pittsburgh as well as a tap instructor and ballet assistant at the city’s Hope Academy of Arts.

“I teach 3-year-olds,” McKee said. “So, I had to think about how am I going to connect with a 3-year-old in a video platform from my living room?”

It turned out to be “extremely fun and challenging in its own ways,” she said. “As I’m making the video, I’d ask stuff like ‘What’s your favorite color?’ and then wait. I felt a little like Dora the Explorer.”

After a couple weeks of YouTube posts, McKee began conducting livestreamed classes with her 3- to 5-year-old students on the Zoom platform.

“It’s been really amazing to watch how young students are able to engage through video,” she said. “They’re used to having iPads and screens and learning through a visual platform.”

With a “class” of toddlers who are in their living rooms, McKee said she does have to make liberal use of the mute setting, “but they give me thumbs-ups. They try to explain to me what they’re saying through movement and without audio, so it’s been really, really interesting.”

Ganovsky agreed that while the past month has had some huge hurdles, it’s also had a few unexpected silver linings.

“I think we’re all looking at this as a creative challenge,” Ganovsky said. “And I think that really says something about us as creative individuals, being able to do this project with only a few weeks and a few resources.”

McKee agreed.

“I’m excited to see in the future how this will carry over,” McKee said. “You get more innovative every single day.”