That’s not to say turning their audience into a virtual one, represented only by a number count and steady stream of comments on the screen rather than physical bodies, didn’t come without a major adjustment. “At first, we were like, ‘This is weird. It’s definitely not as fun for us. We don’t get that connection,'” Halpern admitted. “And that was one of the things that we really always felt, the connection with the crowd. We always talked to the crowd.”
Hawley-Weld added that, though the usual and immediate reaction from fans isn’t there, the duo has discovered an intimacy with their audience that only revealed itself over time. “Because it’s so consistent and daily, there’s a sense of community—and in a totally different way because people are returning. And we’re getting to know them,” she said. “Maybe it’s not immediate, where we can see their reactions, but then we’ll spend some time after the set, going through comments and stories and people’s videos of dancing on the other side of the screen, and we get to know these people, and repost those people or talk to them, and then see them the next day. So it’s actually extremely intimate because of consistency.”
