The Before Times and Virtual Classes --- Our First Blog Post!
Hello, Deeva Rose here!
Photo by Dena Denny
Welcome to The Rose Academy of Burlesque blog! This is my first attempt at writing a blog. It’s new, weird and necessary. I’ve never considered myself a writer, but I have also never considered myself a tech person, a video editor, or an expert on large mirror installation. After titling myself Headmistress of The Rose Academy, I have learned how to wear many different g-strings, both out of necessity and curiosity. Please enjoy my newest adventure.
The Before Times
In early 2020, I was celebrating my first year teaching burlesque classes at The Rose Academy. We had opened our physical space just a few months earlier, and class sales were going really well, like really really well. We had hired another teacher and a teacher trainee to help manage the workload. We had quickly outgrown our tiny studio and were already making plans to find a bigger space. Our March student showcase, Roses in Bloom, had so many students we were worried about fitting everyone on stage for curtain call. The Pourhouse in Minneapolis was packed to the gills with our students' friends, family and burlesque community. After the showcase we started brainstorming on ways to expand our showcase programming. Little did I know this would be my last in person show in Minnesota for 2020.
I tried to manage this expansion thoughtfully, not taking on too much work or growing too fast, while making a living as a full-time burlesque performer and teacher. I knew a little about COVID, but like many people I didn’t recognize how much our lives would change. I flew to Anchorage, Alaska to perform at the Freezing Tassel Burlesque Festival on March 11, the same day that restrictions on international travel were announced. I’ll never forget that date because it’s my sister’s birthday. While in Alaska, I started hearing about event after event being postponed or canceled. All of a sudden, it seemed like all of my means of making a living were slipping out of my fingers. The realization that performing at this festival would be my last for an unknown amount of time was gut-wrenching. I thought everything I worked so hard for was about to be gone.
When I got back home, we had to decide what steps to take with the Rose Academy. We knew we didn’t have the space to keep folks six feet away from each other, so we decided to postpone classes for two weeks. Fortunately, we had just finished a session and students were still signing up for the next one. As it became clearer that in-person classes weren’t coming back anytime soon, we made the difficult decision to indefinitely postpone all classes. I am so thankful for the emotional and financial support of our extended community, for helping us navigate the most uncertain period in The Rose Academy’s history.
Photo by Darin K
Virtual Classes
We knew that virtual classes were our only option if we wanted to continue teaching and playing a role in the burlesque community. While I had always wanted to move some of my content online, I had ZERO experience in doing so, and almost none of the technology I needed to deliver a good product. Believe it or not, we didn’t even have an internet connection at the studio!
About 12 students agreed to join me for my first virtual class, an informal version of my lapdance workshop. I set up an old iMac, handed down from my parents, a bluetooth speaker, and lit a few candles. Looking back on this first class, I can say it was almost a complete disaster. The music was too loud, the room was too dark, my cats played a starring role and I would have to completely rearrange my house between every class. It was disruptive to my life and incredibly disheartening to think of how much work it would be to create classes with the same quality as my in-person content.
We took the lessons we had learned from that first experience and kept moving. We decided to move into my home office. First, it was the only door in my apartment that closed completely, which kept out my two lovely and very helpful cats. Second, we could continue living in our space with less disruption to our daily lives. A friend gave me an old refurbished laptop so we could upgrade our Zoom programming. We started learning a lot more about sound management, including microphones and how to stream music over Zoom. Finally, with some coaching from the amazing Indigo Blue and a lot of Youtube University we had our first version of our virtual classroom.
I taught my first few classes out of my home office, with a brand new curriculum made specifically for virtual classes. Thankfully, our next-door neighbor had just moved out, and our apartment was right over the laundry room, so I didn’t receive any noise complaints. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked well enough that students started taking classes again. We even started getting new students who had never taken classes in person, and even some from places outside the Twin Cities! I’m so grateful to the students who took these early classes, because we continued to learn, grow, and add more tools to our toolkit. I owe a lot to their patience.
Once we knew that virtual classes were worth investing our time in we decided to move back to the studio. I can hardly believe that we didn’t even have an internet connection there - it was on my to-do list, but after just a few months in the space it was another expense that I didn’t really need to take on. Now our entire business relies on it!
We still had a lot to learn and it was far from perfect, but we were back, baby!!
Here is a video from my “Home Office" Studio. Notice the cat tail in the window and a cocktail waiting for me to finish my work. I was recording my choreography after a class.