The spread of the coronavirus means that we’re all having to spend a lot of time ‘social distancing’ and staying cooped up indoors when we’d probably rather be outside, seeing our friends and enjoying our lives.
Keeping our distance from one another is absolutely essential to reducing the spread of the virus and saving lives, but it doesn’t mean we can’t still find ways to have fun!
It’s only natural that many folks have been feeling a little bored and lonely during these difficult times, but one neighborhood in the North West of England is showing that you can still be social, even while social distancing.
Elsa Williams lives in the Chester area of the United Kingdom. She recently started sharing videos on Twitter showing how her neighbors were handling life in lockdown.
Every day, at 11am, Elsa and her neighbors step outside their homes and play some music, dancing together and getting a bit of daily exercise, all while respecting the rules of social distancing!
Elsa has been filming these little dance sessions and sharing them pretty much every day for several weeks now, with one of those tweets going viral and receiving more than 7 million views so far.
After her video from March 31 went viral, Elsa shared some more information about what was going on. She revealed that the woman leading the daily dance sessions is Janet Woodcock, a local fitness instructor.
Elsa added that each ‘distance dancing’ session lasts for around 10 minutes so as not to disturb anyone else and most of the street is home to kids and elderly people who all look forward to the dances each day.
Just in case anyone watching was worried about social distancing, Elsa confirmed that most people dance on their own driveways and everyone always stays the recommended 2 meters apart.
It looks like one of the happiest streets in the world, but one of the funniest parts of the story is that before the lockdown began, most of these neighbors barely even spoke to each other!
Elsa said that “our road hardly spoke to each other before all this”, and it’s amazing to see that a time of ‘social distancing’ has actually helped to bring this little community closer together.
And it’s all thanks to Janet, who decided to go around and put a little note through each neighbor’s letter box, inviting them all to come outside at 11am each day to “send positive thoughts and love to each other”.
In the beginning, Janet says she only ever planned to help out neighbors by offering to do some grocery shopping or have a chat on the phone if they were feeling lonely.
But when one of them said they were struggling to keep active and get any exercise without going outside, Janet had the awesome idea for her daily dances.
As the days have gone by, more and more people have gotten involved, with these fun dances becoming the highlight of many people’s days and giving the whole block something to look forward to. Check out one of the workout sessions below and view the other videos on Elsa’s Twitter feed if you’d like to see more.
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Socially distant dancing happens every day on our road at 11am during #lockdown. This was day seven.#Covid19 #StayHomeSaveLives pic.twitter.com/yBw2Q230CA
— Elsa Williams (@elsalwilliams) March 31, 2020
