Line Dancing with Judee

Judee Curtis

In my opinion, things are not better than they were in March. We’ve had our ups and downs here in Arizona. Data changes daily, weekly, and monthly, so it’s very hard to plan ahead.

On March 14, the day after we stopped dancing, I started planning what dances were going to be taught in September. I purchased music and rewrote step sheets for each level. Time was/is very available to clean and plan for September, because we’ve stayed in, except for doctors, dentist, bank, groceries, and a few take outs since March 14. My husband even stopped golfing in late March. I expected it to snow, as we stopped everything, including our annual trip to Colorado to see our son.

After watching the news on TV and information with pictures from our community, I made the very tough decision not to restart line dance classes in SunBird on Monday, Sept. 7. After sleepless hours of planning how it could be done safely, i.e., distancing coming in and on the floor, hearing each other with masks, dancers not sitting down or drinking water for one hour, cleaning things used or touched, and wondering who has been where and with whom, etc., were very deciding factors.

Distancing was the easiest part, because having separate classes for ultra basics and basics, our numbers would comply with HOA regulations. After talking with the HOA office, I found they have installed sanitizing stations, and cleaning materials are available. The other factors, however, did not change my mind to cancel. Registering new dancers has also been stopped.

Here’s hoping and praying things will be better for October. Only time will tell to see if people will comply with regulations that have been set forth and mandated, i.e., wearing masks and social distancing. I truly miss dancing, teaching, and the dancers! God bless line dancers and line dancing!