Editor’s Note: The following

article is part of a continuing series on how Webster City area businesses are faring

during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two months of online classes and virtual high-fives have sustained Becky Harfst to this point, but the owner of The Dance Connection is ready for a return to normal.

Or as close to normal as she can get anyway.

Harfst has announced that TDC will open its doors to in-person classes for its competition teams in June with strict social distancing and other safety measures put in place.

“We are going to take temperatures, and we have two studio rooms, so we’re going to keep our groups to 10 and under in each room,” Harfst said about the plan once TDC does reopen. “We’re also going to mark off the floors so there’s at least six to eight feet between (dancers), and we’ll clean in between classes. We’ve already bought a huge thing of disinfectant and hand sanitizer, things like that. And if we can dance outside, we might even do

that.”

The TDC’s competition season was under way in March when the novel coronaviru shut down the studio. It still has events planned in late June and early July that, for now, remain on the schedule.

“We’re going to move on like we’re going to go,” Harfst said. “If they do have it, there will be pretty strict restrictions, and if they don’t, we’ll just have to go with that.”

Zoom classes have sustained TDC over the past two months, as Harfst and competition team instructors Joa Rolffs and Kristin Hammitt have routinely interacted with their students. They have manage to keep their dancers in shape with plenty of conditioning and stretching exercises, and Harfst says the students have been receptive to the classes.

“With our competition team, attendance is close to 100 percent every time we meet and the enthusiasm is great,” Harfst said. “There are some days you can tell the kids are bummed, and there are times when (the instructors) are talking and tears will be streaming down our faces. They’re just eager to learn and they want to progress.”

Harfst says it’s been a difficult period for everyone. After 31 years of leading the studio, she’s used to the daily interactions with students. Not having that has been difficult emotionally.

In many ways, part of her family has been taken away.

“It’s been awful,” Harfst said. “Dance is such a hands-on type of activity because you’re always adjusting arms and legs, and just having that physical contact. Emotionally it’s been hard too. At the beginning, we went around and put signs in each (of the dancers’) yards just to give them something. The kids, a couple weeks ago, put on a drive-by parade for the three instructors. I’d bet you there were 25 cars and they were all decorated and honking their horns.”

COVID-19 also forced TDC to postpone its recital this month, but Harfst says a modified event has been tentatively rescheduled for later this summer (July 31, August 1-2).

The times and location are still being worked on.