At my studio, Studio Deep Roots, we have two beloved dance and movement spaces. My classes have been primarily held in the Warehouse Studio, which is our larger space, and is also our performance space for haflas and music events. When COVID-19 closed down the studio, I quickly set up our live streaming classes in the smaller studio--The JewelBox--as it was easier to control environmental factors that would effect the quality of the stream and our comfort as instructors, such as light, sound, and heat.

Over many weeks of tweaking and fine-tuning the details, we were able to come up with both sound and visual quality for our classes that has been great. Students have reported our classes as some of the highest quality they have experienced in streaming classes--in presentation and content--and that is high praise indeed given the massive influx of opportunities they have right now. It made all the hard work worthwhile.

Bonus: it's plug n' play! So any teacher who comes to rent our space can--with a little tutorial on how to turn on the proper lighting--plug their laptop into the system and be able to stream their high quality dance classes from this space using this great equipment. Check it out.

Recorded at Studio Deep Roots as part of our "Deep Roots Live!" live streaming classes with Deep Roots Dance. This week, we had a mix of mainly experienced dancers, so we did a slightly modified Week 3 all around, with alternate drills in finger cymbals, and some brief re-breakdown of Basic Egyptian, and very short taqsim practice at the end. Enjoy!

No matter what platform you are teaching on, you most likely have run into issues at one time or another with trying to find the right lighting for teaching dance, yoga, or other movement online. Any number of these common complaints sound familiar?​

• this feels good, but it's too dim
• the camera can't focus properly
• the video is too grainy
• I'm blinded! 
• it's too hot in here with all these bulbs
• the scene is too busy with all these lamps behind/around me

Trying to get control of your light in your live streaming videos--and do it within a reasonable budget--is definitely familiar to me! I've done some amateur photography in the past, but even with that experience under my belt, trying to properly light my dance classes for teaching in Zoom or on Facebook Live was another animal.