Unfortunately this was not my best weekender that I’ve been to mainly because there were just not enough men to dance with and practically nonexistent in the daytime dancing.
Good
Accommodation really comfortable, really lovely to have a balcony in England, the hotel was really good and the staff very helpful. Socializing with everyone chatting with different people over breakfast and outside over drinks made it very relaxed and sociable. I loved dancing on the balcony on the Saturday night under the warm night air. Catching up with people you don’t see normally, great to see Kazibaby again . Had some lovely dances and thanks to Stewat38, Gerry, Jivelad, , Lost Leader, The Wanderer and a special thanks to Ant for your patience during my tango practice. Also had some lovely non forum dances and my Saturday was made when I discovered Herbie had materialised from thin air at 4am and had a couple of fantastic dances with him made my night.
Bad
The heat in the Utopia room on the Friday night just got unbearable but to the organisers’ credit they swapped rooms for Saturday and there was a 100% improvement. Just lack of men to dance with and hate feeling like a stalker and don’t want to ask someone more than once unless I know them well. The event seemed to be dominated by WCS dancers but that may have just been a perception, although they were all mainly friendly and we had quite a few improvised pretend WCS dances, it can’t have been that bad as one guy danced with me 5 times.
My Observations
I think there was too much going on for too few people and having a blues room and a Utopia room going at the same time just seemed to split the people up unnecessarily. When I went from the Utopia room to the blues room the music seemed very similar. So in my opinion once the milonga (sorry if it’s spelt wrongly) was finished I personally don’t think that there was a need for 2 rooms. I also don’t think that it is necessary to split the WCS dancers from the rest of the dancers as we all seemed to be able to alongside and times with each other just fine. I think also because a large number of attendees were coming only for the freestyle it left not enough people to dance freestyle in the day. Lastly I personally did not need to be full board would have been happy with half board (never made lunch) maybe have brunch instead of breakfast and lunch to allow everyone to get up later.
I want to end on a positive and say that I could tell that the organisers had put in a tremendous amount of work for all our enjoyment and that did not go unnoticed or unappreciated. I can see there is great potential there.
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