Digital Dork Dancing During Lockdown
Yes. Lockdown Round 2. Good news for us, our greatest opportunities have been found within the room.
The Dork Dancing idea, and practice, first started in the privacy and comfort of dancing alone, in the room. Fast forward 4 years, and as a consequence of reflection during lockdown (spending weeks alone in the room), Dork Dancing elevated from something fun to do as a side hobby, to something purposeful as a standalone mental health initiative. The first lockdown can be entirely credited for sparking the mental health movement & community in Da Nang.
So, what opportunities might we find again, at home, within the room, during lockdown? Apparently, lots…
…because lockdown sucks for mental health! That’s easy to understand. Dork dancing was not something to set aside; it was something worth spreading, now even more so than before.
After some brainstorming, things kicked off with a social media challenge. #dorkchallenge #dorkdancing for mental health. Dance like a dork, record, tag 3. Pretty simple.
The challenge was surprisingly pretty popping for about 1-2 weeks. About 50 or so people decided to take the time to participate! Here’s some fun video highlights from the Dork Dancing Challenge:
It’s admittedly difficult to snap your fingers and have a social media challenge like ours go viral. Instead, this was a local movement, spread mostly still within the expat community in Da Nang. Some folks from other countries (Canada, Peru, Spain, US, etc.) did join too.
Outside of this fun (although short-lived!) social media experiment, Dork Dancing continued. Still, every day at 5PM. We call our online events “Digital Dork Dancing.”
The design of the event is strange, yet fun. We meet, chat for a few and then dance like dorks in the privacy and comfort of our rooms, separately yet together.
We held events continuously throughout the entire second lockdown experience in Da Nang. Here’s some of our impact, captured in numbers.
The digital dork dancing community welcomed 29 new dork dancers to the community! In total, in 10 weeks, our community has grown to nearly 150. One digital dork dancer, in particular, has shown up consistently. Her name is Jules and she’s shown up to 25 of the 41 events. Jules explains in some more detail what keeps her coming back.
Not only did dork dancing continue during lockdown, but it expanded its impact too by looking outside of dance to forward its mission. We started offering more events to our community, called “Dork Events.”
Now, we are offering “Dork Meetups” and “Dork Art” as additional spaces for dorks to connect over mental health. In Dork Meetups, you will find a support group to talk and in Dork Art, you will find a space to create art, both exploring mental health topics. We ran 7 of these events, in total, online.
Beyond these new online events, we also launched a new photo storytelling project, Call Us MENTAL, to capture stories that might contribute to destigmatizing issues in mental health. You can learn more about the project here, and read the stories of Olga, Thai, Ethan, Lan, Mily, Sierra & Lani who all wrote their stories during lockdown.
We are grateful for the progress made during lockdown because of the exact challenge that lockdown presented. The lockdown experience isn’t easy. It’s tough. And that’s why dork dancing for mental health became even more relevant. Our initiatives were even covered in the news this month, as something helpful for the Da Nang community.
If you’re feeling down & you happen to be stuck in lockdown, give dork dancing a try in your room!
Dork Dancing depends entirely on charitable giving. We hope you may consider supporting. We offer some fun rewards too.