OBJ Morris - 2020 Scrapbook

Practices re-start (very carefully)
September 2020

We continued with Zoom practices from mid-March until the end of August, with plenty of members joining in for a social meeting, but it was tricky playing music together due to latency issues, and without much tele-conferenced dancing.

In late July, HM Government announced that community facilities could re-open for activities including fitness, grass-roots sport, etc. We consulted our members about returning to "real practices" - albeit that they would need to be Covid-safe. The concensus was a resounding "Yes". Our practice hall management committee held a meeting to explain what was required, and we developed the necessary risk-assessment to demonstrate that we could adhere to social-distancing, hygeine, and track-and-trace requirements.

The first practice included a safety briefing and we included an extensive warm-up as most of us hadn't done much exercise for a while. We explained a plan for the musicians to remain inside the practice hall (to control noise) whilst the dancers would dance outside the hall on the astro-turf lawn. This arrangement required the musicians to wear face-coverings in the hall, whilst the dancers could choose whether to wear face-coverings whilst outside. There is (just) sufficient light outside, and if the weather doesn't permit dancing outside, we will dance inside the hall with the required face-coverings.

We examined each of the dances in our repertoire, and worked out modifications that would ensure appropriate social-distancing. This involved some changes to figures to avoid close face-to-face movements, but the principal change was to dance in half sets. For example, a set of eight would comprise 4 dancers facing 4 invisible dancers. Another set of 8 would dance alongside them in a mirror image so the two lines of 4 real dancers would mostly be facing one another, but from a greater-than-normal distance.

It worked, with relatively little confusion.

Click the pictures to enlarge them

This is Brimfield - OBJ normally dance this with 8 dancers. To provide for social-distancing, we reverted to the original form of the dance; a set of 4. Very few of us remembered doing it that way! We danced it a number of times so those not dancing could see how it worked before taking their turn.
OBJ normally dances Hay-on-Wye as a 6-dancer set This shows the two sets of 6, each comprising 3 real dancers and 3 invisible ones.
Applying the same principle... The same principle of two half-sets was applied successfully to Dilwyn, Much-Gridlock, Witchmens Thistle and a few other dances. The pictures below show some of those dances in progress. We couldn't see how to apply it to some dances, but while we played the tune for Wildridings, the dancers worked out a method of performing that in a socially-distanced way.
Meanwhile, inside the hall... While all this was going on outside, the musicians remained inside the hall, peering out through the patio doors and windows to try to keep track. It was a lot more enjoyable than practicing music through Zoom tele-conferencing.