Dance classes Melbourne: Dance school Main St Funk Epping pleas to reopen
Hundreds of Melbourne dance school owners are pleading with Premier Daniel Andrews to allow them to start operating again, with many ineligible for financial help and facing a bleak future.
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Struggling Melbourne dance school owners are pleading with Premier Daniel Andrews to allow them to reopen.
The Dance Arts Alliance has started a campaign calling for regional dance schools to open now and schools in metropolitan Melbourne to open on October 26.
Dance schools had been slated to reopen on November 23, at the same time as gyms, but in his press conference on Sunday, Mr Andrews said the matter had not been settled and the public health team had been looking into the issue.
Epping dance school co-owner Chloe Jobson said her business Main St Funk had lost about 90 per cent of its revenue since closing in March.
Ms Jobson said dance school owners had put together COVID Safe plans at the beginning of the pandemic, and she believed classes could operate safely again.
She wants dance schools to open when community sport resumes.
“At the moment with the (State Government’s) road map, dance schools are considered the same as gyms and fitness classes which sounds right in theory but we’re actually very different,” she said.
“For one thing, predominantly our students are primary school aged or younger.
“So they’re low risk, they’ve been considered low risk with COVID the whole time.
“We don’t share equipment and social distancing is something that dance teachers include in all their classes.”
Ms Jobson, who runs Main St Funk with her two sisters, said they had not qualified for most forms of financial assistance from the State and Federal governments.
“The reason is most dance schools, their staff are contractors, they’re not actually considered employers which is one of the criteria to qualify for a payment,” she said.
Ms Jobson said she and her sisters only qualified to receive one JobKeeper payment between the three of them.
She said they were also recently told they didn’t qualify for the State Government’s $3000 sole traders’ grant.
“We still have to pay rent and overheads, and we haven’t had any revenue for six months,” she said.
Ms Jobson said they had been running online classes during the lockdown, but many families had lost income during the pandemic and could no longer afford to pay for the classes.
Other parents reported their children had screen fatigue, due to attending school online.
“A huge part of our classes is the connection and friendships, and online classes are obviously not the same as being in the studio,” Ms Jobson said.
She said there were more than 60 dance schools in the City of Whittlesea and the crisis had impacted them all.
In a video address to Mr Andrews, Dance Arts Alliance chair Mike Harrison-Lamond said dance schools were committed to the safe reopening of the industry, but the State Government’s road map for dance made no sense.
Mr Harrison-Lamond said the dance industry contributed $300 million a year to the Victorian economy and provided 10,000 jobs across the state.
A State Government spokesperson said decisions on the operation of indoor facilities including gymnastics and dance studios for amateur participants would continue to be based on public health advice.
Dance studios are scheduled to reopen with safety measures in the last step of the road map if predetermined infection thresholds are met and pending public health advice.
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