Virtual classes, events allow for social activities while distancing

Since the need for connection and recreation remains strong as we isolate during the coronavirus pandemic, the creators of some of Toronto’s favourite community activities are making sure we can still be together, but from a socially safe distance. Dilshad Burman has more.

By Dilshad Burman

With a state of emergency declared in Ontario, social distancing is in full effect and many of your favourite activities and events have likely been cancelled.

While the closures are absolutely imperative to stem the spread of COVID-19, suddenly having nothing to do and nowhere to go can be very disheartening for the more social among us.

Since the need for connection and recreation remains strong, the creators of some of Toronto’s favourite community activities are making sure we can still be together, but from a socially safe distance.

Choir! Choir! Choir! moves online

Choir! Choir! Choir! (C!C!C!) has become a veritable institution in Toronto and on any given Tuesday, they draw a crowd of over 100 people and their ticketed events with special guests are even bigger.

But with COVID-19 restrictions in place, all of that has come to an abrupt halt and the C!C!C! community, like many others, are now unable to hold their cherished weekly gatherings.

“Think about what happened in Toronto when the Raptors won the title — that was like the opposite of what’s happening right now. Everyone in the country was watching that. It just felt so unifying,” says co-founder Daveed Goldman. “Everyone just feels lost now.”

To fill the silent void, Goldman along with fellow co-founder Nobu Adilman took to Facebook Live to keep the music going and, as they often repeat, “never stop singing.”

“I feel like if we can give them an escape for an hour and help them feel like ‘oh there’s other people doing what I’m doing right now’ and we’re all enjoying a moment together and something that’s hopefully memorable to some degree, then that’s great. We’re proud and happy people partook and that they had a good time.”

With close to 10,000 people joining in live and over 170 thousand views thereafter, it’s safe to say the “choir dads,” as they’re affectionately called, found a way to successfully bring their community together while still maintaining social distance.

The next C!C!C! online sing-along is on March 21 on both Facebook and Youtube, and Goldman says they have some new ways to engage and entertain people online.

“Hopefully that will work out well and hopefully when we get back to singing with people in a room it will feel extra celebratory, because we don’t know when that will be.”

Underground Dance Studios goes virtual

One of Toronto’s top dance studios, Underground Dance Centre (UDC), has also chosen to move online after coronavirus concerns made it unsafe to keep their doors open. While it was a difficult decision, owner Aaron Libfeld says it was a no-brainer once he found out how high the stakes were.

“I got an email from one of our clients that’s been with us for ages – she’s a healthcare professional,” says Libfeld. “She just explained that our clients might not be the most affected by COVID-19, but we can be vessels of transmission.”

Libfeld said that the negative repercussions of closing that his clients, teachers and business might have to endure simply did not compare to the potentially devastating consequences of staying open.

“Ultimately we made the decision to close down and we thought that it would be an effort, not only to stop the transmission within our own space, but set an example for other dance studios across the GTA. We were the first studio to shut our doors because of coronavirus and since then, every single other dance studio has followed suit,” he says.

Despite the shutdown, Libfeld says they’re still going to make sure students can keep dancing by making classes available online. He hopes their new virtual platform will give the community they’ve built a way to feel connected.

“This is really exciting. Rather than it being an online tutorial, we wanted to take that in-studio experience and deliver it online,” he explains. “So you start off with a warm-up and then you learn choreography and then you run the choreography. At the end the teachers encourage you to post your videos online. Hopefully we’ll be able to re-post and share it and create a kind of community online.”

And while the virtual classes will help current members and new students stave off the isolation-blues, Libfeld says he wanted to make sure he also supported the 65 teachers at UDC during a time when most of their events and gigs are cancelled.

“By delivering these online classes to the customers and paying the teachers for each and every video that they record — it at least allows them to supplement their income with something, rather than nothing at all.”

Online classes are expected to be available by March 26 on the Underground Dance Centre’s website.

ComiGram2020 takes comic conventions to the web

Another Toronto favourite that was shutdown due to COVID-19 is Toronto ComiCon – the spring event that comic enthusiasts, cosplayers and geeks of all stripes look forward to all year.

One London, Ontario cosplayer who has been going to Toronto ComiCon for over a decade was “devastated” by the cancellation and as many of us do, took to Instagram to share her disappointment.

“I jokingly put on my story on Instagram ‘well I guess we have to turn to social media now,’ and then I got 12 replies saying ‘you should’,” says Mariann Sawyer. “We all use it for promotion …when we’re not at conventions or doing charity events we take to Instagram and Facebook and that is our social outlet … so we thought why not bring ComiCon to social media?”

That post sowed the seeds for what is now ComiGram2020 – an online curation of the various elements that make up a comic convention hosted on Instagram and Discord.

NOTE: this is not an official ComiCon event, but rather an entirely fan generated online convention.

“On Discord you can create different channels and networks through one server,” explains Sawyer. “So I created a ComiGram2020 server and there’s 14 channels with different topics. We’re doing panels through Instagram Live and Discord and we have topics for anime lovers, for Marvel and DC lovers, gamers, Tik Tok is a very big thing so we created a channel for Tik Tok-ers.”

Sawyer says she’s been getting interest from around the world and has enlisted the help of two friends to manage the web based gathering. She’s thrilled with the response and says right now, while it’s necessary to be physically distant, “in isolation, it’s really important to be social.”

“Community can take place in different forms — it doesn’t have to be all in person — but it takes a lot of commitment to be a community and take care of each other,” she says. “[We’ve seen] the panic at stores and the showings of lack of community … so it’s nice to show community in a way that you don’t have to be there in person, but we can still support one another.”

ComiGram2020 runs from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., March 20 to 22.

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