COVID-19 Brings Country Line Dancers to NEOMED

With local dance halls closed, a Northeast Ohio Medical University parking lot looked like a great backup location to a group of country line dancers who had been missing their hobby. When NEOMED received a request from Donna Blystone to use the lot on Friday nights, we were intrigued and asked her to tell us more. Here’s what she wrote:

This group of dancers met on the dance floor! Our “normal” dance floor is down the road at the Dusty Armadillo. We dance anywhere from once a week to three or four times a week. The coronavirus has caused all of our dance halls to close. Though dancing can be done anywhere, including the kitchen, there is something about line dancing that makes doing it with others more enjoyable. It also helps that if you forget a few steps, you can count on SOMEONE in the group remembering them and you can just copy!

Maintaining social distancing is not a problem at all in line dancing. We normally dance approximately three feet apart, so adding a few more feet does not matter at all! Individually, our dancers have been dancing for anywhere from five to twenty-plus years.

Many friendships have begun through dancing. So, in mid-March, when the Dusty shut their doors, many of us have been meeting on Friday nights on Zoom to say hello to one another. During those meetings, we all agreed, though chatting and catching up is nice, what we really wanted to do was DANCE! Dancing is our outlet, our passion, our stress reliever! To NOT dance adds more stress! So, THANK YOU!  Thank you for allowing us to take over a corner of your lot on Friday nights so that we can kick up our heels for a couple of hours!