…and we’re back. Despite my graduation from coding boot camp a few weeks ago, my schooling isn’t so much finished as it has let up a little bit, which still gives me more time to come back to this blog.

Unfortunately I return to this blog with the COVID-19 situation at the worst point it has ever been here in the United States. The much anticipated and highly feared second wave of COVID-19 kicked off at the beginning of November and has left a trail of death and devastation in its wake. Cases are surging out of control in many states and recent Thanksgiving travel and indoor gatherings will likely further exacerbate these surges. Hospitals and ICUs in many states are being strained to the breaking point and are close to running out of resources and staff. Many states have returned to the restrictions imposed in the spring in order to try and slow the spread of this new wave of the virus and California has reintroduced a limited stay-at-home order.

As for social dance, it has more or less stopped cold again in most of the country. Here in the Washington DC area, several medium sized events both indoors and outdoors held earlier in the fall resulted in outbreaks of positive COVID-19 cases and everything basically stopped after that happened. Most of the rest of the country has also stopped social dance, with the exception of a couple states that are continuing at near pre-pandemic levels despite reported outbreaks at dance events and some of the worst COVID numbers in the country (you know who you are).

The good news is multiple vaccines are on the way and an end to this pandemic is in sight. Vaccine candidates from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna both displayed over 90% effectiveness and 100% safety in phase 3 clinical trials and both companies have applied for emergency use authorization by the FDA. A third candidate, a collaboration between AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, demonstrated up to 90% effectiveness and 100% safety in phase 3 clinical trials and could also go before the FDA soon.

If approved, the first round of vaccines could start going out to healthcare workers and hospital workers as soon as two weeks from now. Production and distribution will ramp up then to teachers, hotel staff, and other essential workers into the first half of 2021 and the majority of the general population is projected to receive the vaccine around May or June (possibly a bit later). Distribution will be somewhat tricky as both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require storage at -94°F, but it is doable. Storage requirements for the AstraZeneca vaccine are reportedly not as stringent, making it easier to distribute.

For the remainder of this year and the first half of 2021, we will be watching and providing updates on the COVID-19 situation, the vaccine situation, and the state of social dance in the United States in Europe, as as well as preparing some new features and surprises so we can hit the ground running again once it is safe to social dance and hold large events again.

As for covering the few dance events that are happening this month into the first half of 2021, our stance is very simple. We will not cover ANY social dance event that is scheduled to happen before enough people are vaccinated to make large gatherings a safe prospect again. Based on what we know now the earliest this could happen is June, although there’s a good chance it could be a bit later than that.

In the meantime my personal suggestion would be to find another hobby until it is safe to social dance again. We love social dance, we dearly miss social dance, and social dance is our lifeblood, but the long-haul symptoms of COVID-19 in particular are very scary and are permanently debilitating. Let’s be honest: social dancing before it is safe to do so is not worth risking permanent disability resulting from a long-haul COVID infection, and this is not even touching on exacerbating the already out-of-control community spread of the virus. I personally plan to get back into bicycling for the next 6-8 months, both to replace the endorphins I’m missing from social dance and to shed some quarantine pounds in anticipation of my return to the floor.

One last very important reiteration: for heaven’s sake, please wear a face mask when you go out in public. There really is no good reason not to wear one, and covering your nose and mouth in public while a rapidly spreading airborne virus is killing hundreds of people daily is just common sense self protection as well as courtesy to others. Based on IHME data, we could save over 50,000 lives this winter with universal face mask use. Anti-maskism is some of the most toxic borderline sociopathic malarkey I have heard in all of my years on this earth. The lies of anti-maskers are easily debunked with 30 seconds of Googling, and the misinformation they spread has been responsible for killing people. Don’t fall for their stupidity. Wear a face mask.

I’ll be posting significant updates as they come in.

I haven’t written much on this blog in the past few months because, frankly, there still hasn’t been much to write about as of the time of this writing in the late hours of August 16, 2020, COVID-19 is still wreaking havoc on America. After a relative lull in cases earlier this summer, cases are now surging again in several states, and the majority of states in America have, at the very least, seen an uptick in cases. Because of this, the vast majority of dance events, including all congresses, remain cancelled or suspended. Many dance venues have closed and others hang on by a thread.

Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine entered phase 3 clinical trials in July. Although encouraging progress has been made on multiple COVID-19 vaccines, the earliest that we could see one available to the general public, even if all goes well, is next spring.

The IHME is now predicting another large spike of COVID-19 cases throughout most of the country beginning in October and lasting through the winter, culminating in close to 300,000 deaths total in the United States. It is likely that the second spike will not be as severe as the second wave of the Spanish flu (knock wood, I hope I’m right there) but at the very least it could be a repeat of March and April if mandates are eased too extensively and guidelines regarding face masks are ignored.

Which brings me to my plea to everyone: PLEASE WEAR A FACE MASK WHENEVER YOU GO OUT IN PUBLIC. Face masks have been proven effective at stopping the spread of the coronavirus and much of the junk science pushed by anti-masker conspiracy theorists is just that: junk, and dangerous, deadly junk at that.

If you look at the IHME graph above this paragrapH, the short small green curve represents what will happen in the fall if we have mostly universal face mask wearing and the much steeper red curve represents the brutal and tragic reality we will face this fall if we do not have at least mostly universal face mask wearing and public safety mandates are eased too extensively. Which scenario do you want to be our reality in the fall? If, like most people, you want a scenario that involves a lot less death and suffering to be our reality, then please wear a face mask whenever you are out in public and especially in situations when social distancing is impossible. Wearing a face mask is not a political issue, it is an issue of common sense self-protection and self-preservation, as well as protecting your community.

I’m choosing not to cover the few dance events that are going on because the vast majority of them are private, and I don’t necessarily want to encourage people to go to the few public ones that are available at this time as I personally believe it’s too soon to begin social dancing again.

I also don’t know of many dance events because I’ve been out of the loop lately. This morning,I am entering an intensive computer programming school for the next three months, after having been in their prep program for the last three months. Therefore, from this morning on, this blog will go right back on hiatus again until the middle of November, at which time I will drop another state of the scene report. If something very groundbreaking and game changing happens regarding coronavirus and social dance before then, I will report on it on a Sunday as Sunday is the only day off per week I get from this intensive school program.

I hope everyone is doing well and is able to weather the storm in the meantime. If you must social dance right now, consider forming or participating in a quarantine dance bubble. If you must go to a public social dance event (if you are of a mind to do so, now is the time before things are anticipated to get serious in October), then please wear facemasks at all times and follow all of the event’s other guidelines without complaint.

The more we take steps to protect ourselves and stop the spread of this virus, the sooner we will be back social dancing, hugging, and hanging out in person like we did before COVID, and the sooner the dance congresses and festivals this blog faithfully covered prior to COVID will return. I wish everyone well, and I’ll be back in November.

[DISCLAIMER: I am NOT a doctor, epidemiologist, virologist, or health expert. This article is purely my opinion and speculation based on what I know right now, which could change rapidly. Do not base any of your short or long-term actions on any of my speculation and go by what the CDC recommends. I have no affiliation with any news organizations or other organizations cited in this article.]

I did not necessarily want to write an update so soon after my last post on this subject, but with large parts of the country opening there has been serious talk of restarting dance classes and socials and I felt I needed to address this.

First of all, I am NOT entertaining any unproven conspiracy theories. Do not waste your energy by posting them in the comments.

As we all know, large parts of the country are beginning a first phase of reopening, with the virus still spreading and a cure still a long way away. Predictably, cases are rising in the parts of the country that are reopening.

The CDC is now recommending that everyone wear a face mask in public, which some people are protesting.

A vaccine is still estimated to be about 12 to 18 months away, although some candidates are showing promise in phase one trials. Hydroxycloroquine, the drug touted by the President and others, has been proven to be ineffective and have potentially fatal side effects. Remdesivir is showing promise, but only as a therapeutic that reduces recovery time of severe cases. There is an uptick in antibody testing, but we still do not have conclusive proof that antibodies confer immunity to the virus (which means we are still a long way from “immunity cards” if that will even happen at all). Everything from llama antibodies to cannabis is being floated as a potential treatment or prophylaxis, but we do not have anything conclusive yet.

Contact tracing and selective quarantine of those in close contact with known positive cases is a long-term solution that could allow us to reopen the country and contain the virus safely, but we do not have the infrastructure in place to do this as yet.

Despite the country reopening, and maybe even partially because of it, we are not out of the woods.

The latest IHME graphs show a large delay in the expected summer drop-off of the first wave of coronavirus cases, partially due to a reduction in social distancing and the country starting to open up.

Even with cases dropping off during the summer, large dance events, with large intermingling crowds dancing less than six feet apart from one another and touching hands, are prime examples of what is known as a “super-spreader” event. As we observed in South Korea recently, all it takes is one super-spreader event to cause an explosion of new cases even in areas with the virus contained.

Worse still, if this virus follows the same course as the 1918 “Spanish Flu”, which appears to be what is happening, a brutal, deadlier second wave of the virus could be coming in the fall. During the second wave of the Spanish Flu, millions died and many parts of the country shut down entirely. Granted, it’s not 1918 anymore and things are very different, but parallels are beginning to show. China has just placed over 100 million of their citizens back into lockdown after a second wave of cases started to come up there, making a second wave here all the more likely.

So what does all of this have to do with dance? As I said, there has been some serious talk of starting in-person dance classes and large socials again as soon as later this year and I wanted to address this.

My educated assessment, based on what we know now, that holding a large dance social or a large in-person dance class any time this year is still a bad idea. A large dance social is guaranteed to be a super-spreader event, and we do not have the contact tracing and infrastructure in place to contain the explosion of cases that will result from such an event.

If a second wave does occur in the fall, holding any large dance socials is particularly unadvisable for obvious reasons.

I would say the most we can get away with dance-wise this year, as I alluded to in my last article, is small private invite-only parties of 10 people or less with mandatory temperature checks at the door during the summer when the case-load is at its lowest, and even that is pushing it, especially given that we know that this virus spreads asymptomatically.

I miss dance dearly and want to get back to it as much as anyone, but we have to be careful, responsible and methodical about getting back to normal. We will not stay in lockdown forever, or even necessarily until we have a vaccine (keeping the country shut down that long would not be sustainable), but we have to respect the new rules until we can get the infrastructure in place to open safely. No one asked for this circumstance, but this is where we are, it is what it is, and like all other crises, it’s going to take some personal sacrifice on everyone’s part to make it through.

[This is a guest post. All views expressed in this post are the views of the author. – #FrugalCongressLife Management]

Salsa In Crisis

By Elizabeth Silleck

Salsa is saving me in this very moment. Instead of day drinking on my living room floor eating another bag of fake Doritos from my Aldi Instacart order, I’m writing this. Don’t get me wrong—I will day drink on my living room floor and demolish those “Fauxritos” (as me and my boyfriend have started calling them) at some point this week, but “just for today”, I’ve got an on2 class to teach later, a reason to stay bloat-free, and a little spark of inspiration to tell the world (ok, that’s ambitious—to tell the few on my friends list who actually read this) how, throughout the years, dancing salsa saved my ass.

When I started taking lessons in NY, I was 25 years old. My daughter was turning 10 (yes, you read that right) and becoming more interested in her friends, and I’d spent the years after graduating college pretty lost. I’d been disillusioned with my intended career path as a social worker and quit after 6 months, and had spent a few years working with unintelligent, petty people in a small medical office run by condescending and thankless doctors. I made crap money. The few friends I’d made in college had moved on and I had less and less contact with them. I didn’t know it, but I was depressed. I spent way too much time and energy on dead-end “relationships” with commitment-phobic boys. One of those ridiculous flings actually led me to a salsa class, and I was instantly obsessed. When the thing with the boy crashed and burned, I decided I HAD to keep the dancing going.

I ended up going to a studio near my job in White Plains, NY, and that was the beginning of a complete shift in my life. I met women and men at that studio who, to this day, are my closest friends. When I say that I mean they know EVERYTHING about me, they’ve seen me at my best and my worst, they’ve been there through all the victories and really, really rocky times in life, and they love me fully, including all my flaws. They are the people I think about when I need to be reassured that there are still sane, reasonable, kind and intelligent people in the world, despite the fact that these values are constantly under attack at this time in history. Salsa save #1: my friend group.

It was right around that time that, after much hesitation and procrastination, I had finally submitted an application to the law school near my job, which had an evening program; I only half-expected that I would really go. But go I did, and life was a challenge. I worked 8am-5pm at a law firm as a receptionist/legal assistant, then went to school from either 6-10pm or 8-10pm, Monday through Thursday. My weekends were consumed mostly with studying and spending time with my daughter. The only time that felt like “mine”, that provided release, where I wasn’t working or planning or processing or navigating, was when I went dancing…and go dancing I did; whenever I could, I went to classes and workshops and socials in NYC, Latin nights, house parties and even managed a few Congresses. I had a lot more energy and needed a lot less sleep then, but I have no doubt without salsa I would have had a nervous breakdown from the amount of pressure and responsibility I had day after day after day. Salsa save #2: keeping me sane during the four years I did work + law school + parenting.

Around the beginning of those four years, at one point I fell in love. It was a real relationship, not the stuff of my EARLY early 20s. He was a salsa teacher, and I learned a lot from him. Ultimately, he broke up with me and never before (or since) have I felt my heart be crushed so completely. I almost lost the will to live, if I’m being honest—only the knowledge that I needed to be there for my daughter took that off the table. It took me almost 8 months to recover from that heartbreak, and the ONLY thing—I mean, I would cry during spin class and sometimes break down in my law school classes—the ONLY thing that distracted me from the pain was dancing. Salsa save #3: helping me manage heartbreak.

Fast-forward 14 years or so, and I’m living in Florida with a man I married way too soon, with way too many idealistic notions of what that marriage would be and nothing to back it up. The distance between us grew along with the hostility, and I found myself painfully alone. I’d made attempts to form community in Florida, but I didn’t realize, in my desperation, that I was failing to discern whether the people I tried to befriend were actually people I meshed with—I found out later they weren’t. The marriage imploded and my husband left to another state, to take another job (and tried to take my dog, too). I was left with an unaffordable mortgage and expenses, in a big empty house. And then it occurred to me, I had a skill others would pay to learn—dancing. I was already assisting newer dancers in the classes I was taking and had informally taught friends over the years, and several of the people I’d met through salsa in Florida had encouraged me to teach—since I hadn’t needed the money before that point, I’d chalked that up to a “maybe someday” thing. But then I did need the money. So I started to teach ladies’ styling at a studio, and then transitioned to another studio, where I completed a formal salsa instructor training program, learning how to follow AND lead, and teach followers and leaders various fundamental partnerwork, along with styling and shines. I was able to supplement my income, keep my mind focused on preparing for my lessons, and I ended up making a small circle of invaluable friends for the first time since moving to Florida. Having that focus on learning and practicing new material, staying mobile and active, and having in-person friends to hang with helped me to not take the dating thing too seriously, as well…and I ended up meeting an amazing man who is now my partner. Salsa save #4: helping me through divorce fallout, financially, physically and romantically.

And now, here we are. With group classes, workshops and private lessons IRL completely moot due to COVID, salsa is saving me yet again. I’m extremely fortunate and I know that—my full-time career job is thus far stable, as is my partner’s. We are safely quarantined in that same expensive house (it’s on the market, FYI!), but I’ve lost several hundred dollars per month of income, the joy and connection that working with my students gave me, the exercise, the community. And so, on a whim, I decided to try something different and, with the help of my partner, launched UWanna Dance Salsa. Streaming online classes are not the same as IRL, I won’t try to pretend they are. BUT thinking up ways to teach partner work to people alone at home, drawing on years of experience across many studios to devise well-rounded classes, looking for new music to play for my students, helping to popularize the on2 style in an area where on2 dancers are few and far between, and interacting with students via chat, all bring me a lot of joy and purpose, which I really need right now. And a little income from those classes helps to keep us stocked in Instacart Fauxritos from Aldi (AND fresh organic produce from a local farm). I also decided right away that as long as health care workers are overloaded and underequipped and working people are laid off due to COVID, I will not charge anyone on the front lines for my services, nor anyone who lost their jobs/businesses because of it—I might not be in a position to do much, but at least I can bring an hour of distraction, release and joy to the folks who are feeling this the most. Salsa save #5: helping me stay sane during a frickin global pandemic.

I say it to everyone who will listen: learning to dance salsa is one of the best decisions I ever made, and I think that will remain true as long as I’m on this planet. If salsa were a person, I’d be that annoying, clingy girlfriend with doting heart emojis in my eyes that can’t stop saying “I love you” to it. I can’t do that, so I’m encouraging you to learn, or keep learning, or try a different style of, or listen to more music related to, or one way or another connect to salsa. (*caveat: for those in the scene, I am aware that “salsa” is an umbrella-like, contrived marketing term under which numerous dances and genres of music fall; I’m not trying to be a dance or music historian right now, simply singing the praises of the dance, so don’t come at me).

There are a ton of people who have built their entire careers on this dance, know more than me, dance better than me, and are extremely prestigious in the field—I love to watch them on YouTube and aspire. I’m not that person, and I probably never will be—it’s really not my goal. My goal is to keep on loving it, and help others love it too. To express the music and the joy it brings me using my body. To put aside the things that hurt, that worry, that feel insurmountable, for just an hour and enjoy the feeling of being in the dance. To, someday, I hope, dance with my favorite leads and follows and meet new ones on a Sunday afternoon daytime social and have more of those moments when the music drops, when the turn is perfect, when the beat causes various parts of my body to pop, roll, whip without my full direction, to feel alive on the dance floor. My goal is to keep on letting salsa save me in the inevitable dips in life, and letting it bring immeasurable joy during the good times. My goal is to help you find that too, so you can do the same. So, come dance with me. You know Uwanna…

[if you want to share an inspirational story about how dance saved your life, e-mail fcl@frugalcongresslife.blog – #FrugalCongressLife management]

We’re going to do something a bit different with this article and talk about a foundational principle of managing currency that is very important to the deep understanding of going to dance congresses frugally.

That principle is that there are three different currencies you have to deal with when planning to attend a dance congress as frugally as possible.

Some of you play mobile phone games and have encountered games where there are two or more different currencies. You may have coins to pay for some things, gems to pay for other things, and maybe a third or fourth currency in the case of some games.

There are parallels to real life with this – when planning for a dance congress or any other type of trip, you deal with three different currencies in real life.

The first currency is money. This is the obvious one. Dollars, pounds, pesos, rupees – whatever the currency is where you are in the world at the time. Your pass, hotel room, food, plane ticket, all of that is paid for with money. Money is the first and foremost of the three currencies of the #FrugalCongressLife.

But there is a second, less obvious currency you have to deal with: time.

How is time a currency, you ask? Simply put, many of the ways you save money at congresses have you spending extra time.

Let’s say you stay offsite from the event hotel at a cheaper motel or AirBNB 15 minutes away from the event, which to be clear is something we do not recommend doing for a variety of reasons, but that some people do regardless. You may be saving money by staying offsite but for at least a sizable chunk of the money you are saving by doing this, you are spending time instead.

We’ll assume that each day of the event, you travel from your offsite location to the event for workshops, back to your offsite location to shower up for the party, then back to the event for the party, then back to your offsite location to sleep after you finish dancing. That’s two hours you have spent on commuting that you could have spent napping, taking workshops, eating a nice meal, socializing, or doing any number of other things if you had stayed at the event hotel and just had a 30 second walk from your room to the event. What money you saved is offset at least somewhat by time spent.

This is true for many other money saving strategies as well.

If you take public transportation somewhere instead of an UBER, you have saved money, but spent time, as public transportation takes anywhere from two to four times as long as an UBER ride on average.

Same thing with buying groceries instead of eating out – you save money, but spend time. If you go super frugal and make your own food at the congress, you spend even more time.

About the only money-saving strategy that doesn’t also have you spending time is buying your pass early, which is frankly a no-brainer for congresses you know that you will be attending.

Thinking of time as a currency puts a lot in perspective.

But there is still a third currency one deals with in dance congress planning and budgeting: stress.

Stress is a more abstract currency, but it could be classified as a form of currency, because it takes away from your enjoyment of the event and the absence of it adds to your enjoyment of the event. Furthermore, if you have to deal after the event with a stressful caused by a money saving decision made at the event, you have still paid in stress, but it was a deferred payment.

Let’s say the budget motel you stay in is a block away from the event hotel, but your room has a bedbug infestation and some of the bedbugs come home with you in your luggage. You have not really paid in time immediately to offset what you have saved in money in this example, but you have most certainly paid in stress, both instant and deferred. A bedbug infestation you bring home from a cheap motel is something you have to pay professionals to fix and lose your bedding and other possessions as well, so going to a cheap disreputable motel possibly carries extra payments in money, time, AND stress.

If you take public transportation to the event and the train breaks down, you are paying in stress AND time what you saved by taking public transportation instead of UBER.

If you fly a budget airline or take a budget bus line and your trip is delayed or cancelled, you have paid in time and stress as well.

If you stay at an AirBNB, you have the extra time and stress of having to manage your host’s expectations (your host is likely not a dancer and doesn’t fully understand the world of the dance congress) and clean up after yourself a bit more diligently than you would at a hotel that has a cleaning staff.

The key to effectively attending dance congresses frugally without subtracting from your enjoyment of these congresses then, is to know how to manage and balance these three different currencies and understand how one can offset the other. Sometimes it is worth spending a little extra money to save time and stress, the two other currencies of dance congress planning and budgeting. Sometimes spending a little extra time or dealing with a little stress is worth the monetary savings. It’s really more of an art than a science and something that has to be felt out and applied to every individual situation, but that is something that gets easier with time and experience.

I hope this article helped some people gain more perspective as they plan and budget the rest of their congress season.