Lithgow Dance Academy will be dancing at a safe distance come Monday, June 15

Lithgow Dance Academy owner Meloney Tesoriero decided to do half price lessons through Zoom, to be able to keep her students dancing.

Ms Tesoriero said she had a twinkle toes class for children aged between two and five.

"It's really hard to zoom with them because they get distracted from their siblings or being at home in their lounge room their dog or cat might go past and then I've lost them and then they're hiding behind the lounge," she said.

"I'm going "come back, come back" and they said "we can't see your feet" or they're doing handstands on the lounge, so it's really hard, zooming is really hard for the little ones."

Ms Tesoriero said that most students were just hanging to get back in the studio.

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"Just so we can dance together, it just helps because students can bounce and feed off each other a bit," she said.

"I have a two year old and a five year old in the same class. And the five year old will copy exactly me and then the two year old will copy the five year old, if you know what I mean.

"Because she will think, oh she is cool I will copy her, which is a good thing and I don't have that at the moment."

Ms Tesoriero said money wise, these past weeks had been terrible.

"I've basically missed out on my whole term two school dance fees, because I was doing half pricing for Zoom, so yeah we've got three weeks left with a public holiday and then we break up for two weeks," she said.

Ms Tesoriero also hasn't had any government subsidies to help her with her costs, though in part, she said that was her own fault because she hadn't handed in her tax returns.

"So financially it's been really, really hard," she said.

"I don't know what other people are like, but running your own businesses without any help is hard."

Ms Tesoriero also runs a fruit and vegetable business called Mountain Blue Providores where she delivers fresh fruit and vegetable hampers.

"We had lost a lot of restaurants in Lithgow because of the coronavirus so I have been delivering door to door fruit and veg hampers," she said.

"It's good but its hard work."

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Ms Tesoriero said despite going back to dancing she will still be doing her fruit and vegetable hampers because businesses are still down with restaurants only seating so many people.

"When I say that I haven't been able to self isolate it's because I've still been out delivering hampers because I've had to somehow stay afloat. I've still got my bills to pay," she said.

"But there's a lot of little old people in Lithgow that have been wonderful, self isolating, and ringing me going 'oh we want a hamper this week'."

Ms Tesoriero said that despite many of her customers self isolating, they have said they're going to continue purchasing her hampers.

"They don't have to worry about going to the shopping centre, and it's all fresh so that is lovely of them," she said.

"It is literally just dropped on the doorstep, they can just go to my Facebook site and say I'll have one hamper, here is my address and they can direct debit, it is so easy."

Despite the hardships of juggling two businesses Ms Tesoriero was excited to open back up her studio doors with Covid-safe guidelines in place.

"Students will still have to social distance, which means no holding hands for the little kids.

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"We can't run around in circles holding hands or touching each other, the older students understand, they're really good," she said.

Since she never had more then eight in a class, and different dance genres are on at different times she hasn't had to split any of her classes up.

"We are just hanging to get back in to the studio so we can practice our routines," she said.

Ms Tesoriero said one of the hard things with Zoom classes are that she can see them but she doesn't actually know if they are doing it correctly and she can't correct their mistakes.

"So they are doing it and they are doing the steps correctly, but when in the studio I can say look you're doing this a little bit wrong or you're not pointing correctly...and I can do it and they copy me until we master it, but I don't have that online," she said.

"So we're learning new choreography and the steps but we're not really doing technique, you can't do technique over Zoom."

Another challenge for the dancers have been hearing the music.

"So I had to really turn that up," she said.

Another thing Ms Tesoriero has been doing, has been pre-recording her half an hour dance class and sending it to students who for multiple reasons may not be able to attend the class.

"Then they can play it and rewind it and do it when they want and thats been good," she said.

"Lots of people work and they drop their child off at dancing and then go to work and pick them up afterwards, but with Zoom they have to be at home at the certain time and they might need a parent to set it up for them."

Ms Tesoriero said they have three group dances, and in term one they picked the music for each.

"So five or six of them all dance together, and they might work together doing it but now we can't work together. We haven't been able to work together for 11 weeks," she said.

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"But everyone knows what they've got to do, but we need everyone together in the same room at the same time because some of them might do a cartwheel over another girl's leg, or things like that.

"And because we haven't been able to do that, I just say pretend that Lillian is standing right next to you and pretend that she's going the opposite way you are and count it in your head, because she'll be counting as well and that's how we do it.

"So it'll be interesting when we actually all together are doing it."

Ms Tesoriero said another challenge has been managing her three children who were being home schooled while running a business.

"Trying to keep the kids quiet while I'm on Zoom teaching my students has been hard, because I have to have the music quite loud so they can hear it and then I have my kids in the background going 'Mum', and I am like please just give me half an hour!" she laughed.

"We can't wait to get in the studio and all dance together and enjoy the music."

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