Windy City Line Dance Mania
Oct 6 -9, 2005
EVENT DIRECTORS: Mark Cosenza, Glen Pospieszny & Eve Yeaton

Year 3 has been completed and I am finally getting back to a normal routine again. Hats off to anyone trying to run an event like this solo because I would find it next to impossible to hold my full time job and pull off an event of this size. That’s why it was imperative to co-host this event with Eve and Glen. Each of us focused on certain areas where I handled the registration preparations, hotel requests, scheduling, contracts and general questions coming from everyone, Eve handled putting together the dinner show, getting the volunteers, making sure the T-Shirts come off with terrific design as well as ordering them etc.., Vendor relations and promoting the event in general, and Glen handled the Hospitality Suite, Staff Menu and Step Book Preparations.

The Thursday night party kicked things off and I was pleased to have an additional room open this year for our dancers alleviating any crowding that may have occurred last year. The hotel also kicked in to provide a HUGE floor in the Beginner room that took away most of the carpeted space that folks were forced to dance on in 2004. Kudos to them for providing these extras.

Throughout the weekend dancers were given terrific workshops and many many dances from top name instructors such as  

Windy City Instructors

In addition to this, we also presented a couple of mini workshops from your event directors Mark Cosenza, Eve Yeaton and Glen Pospieszny

As in 2004, there were 5 rooms of workshops going on with the fifth room dedicated for beginner dances.  The 8000 square foot main ballroom not only included some terrific and popular workshops during the day, as well as an hour dedicated to Open Dance during the lunch hour. Workshop Room One also featured several hours of Open Dance during the day on both Friday and Saturday as well as an extra hour on Sunday.

DJ Louie gets a visit from Joanne Brady

The demos were held on Friday morning for the Friday dances and on Friday night for the Saturday ones.  The complete schedule can be found here. Given the number of dances, it is hard to believe that we were able to get through presenting all of them within an hour. This is mostly due to Louie keeping things moving and not allowing for any lengthy breaks between each demo. The demos were done in order of each hour going from left to right (Ballroom 1 to Ballroom 5). Sunday workshops were reserved as a second teach for some of the instructors more popular dances.  Also provided was a listing of all of the dances (as well as the songs/artists used for each of them) in alphabetical order so that folks can reference the time or times each was being taught. My favorite new dances over the weekend included:

That’s Life (C’est La Vie) – Johanna Barnes: I was really pleased to see this one win the Choreography Competition. More on that later.

Double XL (Ouch) – Peter Metelnick & Alison Biggs: The song “It Hurts” was such a catchy catchy tune that I would have danced anything to it. Fortunately, this dance was good, interesting and just about tricky enough to keep my interest. This will be my first teach as my class reps who were in class with me were in total agreement about this one.

No Place To Go – Ann Wood (Taught by Stella Cabecca): I really like the music on this one (Radio Dancing – Englebert Humperdinck) and the dance was cute and kept my interest. I unfortunately only caught parts of the dance and the reviews so will need to study the step sheet a bit before I teach this one.

Hernando’s Hideaway – Roy Verdonk: If there was “an event dance”, this one was it. This packed the 8000 foot dance floor during the workshop and later during open dance. It’s easy enough that anyone can do it even if you can’t quite master the first 8 counts of syncopated foot work. Glen will be teaching this in Tampa so you are not going to want to miss this workshop if you didn’t catch it in Chicago!!!

Meltdown – Scott Blevins: Many nice reports on this one and will fill the floors in many places.  Already taught at our Thursday night class.

Freaky Girl – Rachael McEnaney: Check out the video. Fun little dance and will be taught very soon here at our Thursday night class. Stop by if you’re in the neighborhood.

Just For Tonight – Larry & Tracy Harmon: I heard nice reports on this one from the MIL in Vegas event and I was not disappointed when I saw this one in person. I couldn’t attend the class, but I’m sure Eve will be teaching this one.

Lover Boy – Guyton Mundy: The music is cool and Guyton came up with a nice easy one that anyone can do. An excellent social dance floor filler.

Country Drive – Doug & Jackie Miranda: Despite the name, I liked this one from the demo. Hopefully I can learn this one at the Vegas Explosion.

What Is Me – Jamie Marshall: I thought the demo was great on this one. I wish I could have taken the class.

Clouds In My Eyes – John Robinson: Check out the video. One of the few classes I had time to take and it was an enjoyable experience even if it was at 9am on Sat. and I was quite brain-dead.

God Bless The Child – Simon Ward: A blast from the past and a dance presented before it’s time. This one was first choreographed before all of the other slow tempo dances were created. Many dismissed this years back because they couldn’t hear the rhythm with the song, but this is truly a dancer’s dance and their are a lot more true dancers out there now.

Spanish Desire – John Dembiec: Saw this one at the Big D Dallas event and enjoyed the demo. Couldn’t catch the class at either event unfortunately.

California Bounce – Mark Cosenza & Yvonne Anderson (taught by Eve Yeaton): Check out the video. Magnificently taught by Eve Yeaton. One thing I must mention that was absolutely the coolest was watching a very young man master this dance and watching Instructor Eve have a lot of fun with him playing along side while he was dancing it. It was probably my favorite moment the whole weekend to be honest because I love seeing the youngsters learn something other than the Electric Slide. It was good to see even the youngest catching on to this “introduction to hip-hop” style of dance. Hats off to dancer Lia Andrus for bringing her young’en and showing him at this age just how cool line dancing is.

Buck Wild Stomp – Kathy Brown (taught by Guyton Mundy): Something about the music is infectious. A great beginner dance.

Hot ‘N Sweaty – John Robinson & Guyton Mundy (taught by John): A floor filler.

More dances taught that have either made the circuit or have been taught by my class include:

Crabbuckit – Gerard Murphy (the most played dance at the event I think); Soluna – Robbie McGowen-Hickie (taught by Stella Cabecca); Replay – Scott Blevins; Freaks On The Floor – Scott Blevins; Feels So Good – Amy Christian (taught be Doug & Jackie Miranda); Syncopated Love – Dan Albro (taught by Joanne Brady).

As for me, I stuck to the Beginner Room for my workshop teaching a new one; Roughin’ It (Done to Travis Tritt’s Rough Around The Edges) and B Squared,(check out the video) which is slowly getting some attention. (Thanks!) I’ll be teaching this one in Tampa along with a brand new dance Get Over Here! (shhh, it’s a secret) and California Bounce.

Order your 2005 video of all the dances taught here! For an alphabetical listing of what is on the video click here.  A couple of dances that were thrown in at the last minute not included on the step sheet disc, but included on the video were "Coco Puffs" and "Hickety Bickety".

Mark Cosenza, Jackie & Doug Miranda
 

The choreography competition offered up some terrific dances and the comments I received from the judges on this year’s competition was excellent.  Two heats of dances were taught and the top 2 from each heat were presented on Saturday night.  This year, we had a tie in one of the heat’s so 3 dances were presented.

The top 3 from each room were as follows:

Heat 1 

1 – “After Party” – Maurice Rowe 

2 – “Dilemma” – David Morgan 

3 – “That Cat Is High” – Bob Izral

Heat 2 

1 – “That’s Life (C’est La Vie)” – Johanna Barnes 

2 – "Someday-Somewhere" – Scott Schrank 

3 – “Rock This Room” – Christopher Petre

Overall Winner:

Johanna Barnes (who has automatically won a teach slot for 2006.)

A couple of notes regarding the competition:

This year, we slightly revamped things with the competition so that the scoring categories were a bit more clear and all of the judges provided comments on what they liked and what they would have changed in the dance. This provided some excellent feedback to all of the competitors. I worked Heat 1 this year and all had a lot of participation from the dancers who got to learn these newest creations from a lot of up and coming names.

My favorite change gave the option to all of the daytime judges to dance the dance they picked in their heat in the final face-off on Saturday Night. This really made the face-off a lot of fun to watch as four of the five judges for each dance participated. Special thanks go to: Stella Cabecca, Gerard Murphy, John Robinson and Jamie Marshall for joining Maurice Rowe for his After Party demo as well as Judy McDonald, Max Perry, Rachael McEnaney and Junior Willis for joining Johanna Barnes’s demo of That's Life. They all looked fabulous and really showcased these dances for the Saturday Night crowds.

The dinner again went very smooth this year with everyone in one room with the table sign-up sheet.  This alleviated the pressure of running to find tables and sit with people you know since this could be handled in advance.  The dinner show was short and sweet! I did hear a lot of positive things about it. Routines featuring Simon Ward & Roxanne Kumre, Jackie Miranda & Rachael McEnaney, Roy Verdonk, and well… uh, Guyton and his back-up dancers, yours truly and Glen. As terrified as I was to perform this routine, I was glad I did it and nobody booed me or through tomatoes or anything -J  This all in addition a funny "balloon contest" courtesy of Doug Miranda to see who could fit the most balloons on their body underneath their clothes. Let's just say, that some of them were very creative.

Simon Ward and Doug Miranda were among the performers in the Dinner Show.
 

Other changes included two Scheduled Review Rooms. I was able to post this on the Master Schedule as well as on the rooms. This allowed everyone to review every dance taught over the weekend. This proved popular and feedback was positive. Also new was the additional night-time open dance room featuring DJ Jill Babinec. Jill was a true professional and played dances that perhaps were regionally popular in addition to the standards. This helped alleviate the dreaded “cleared dance floor” problem that so plagues Open Dance. I also tried something new by offering a computer disc that acted as a step book for all of the dances taught. This alleviated having to lug around a lot of paper. The experiment was a success and we sold out of discs there. However, I do have more, so if you’d like to order yours, click here. For an alphabetical listing of all of the dances included, click here!

Jill Babinec kept things hopping with her Open Dance program in Ballroom 1

One problem area involved some of the CD players provided not playing some of the “burned” music from the instructors. While this was a nuisance, we managed to make changes, find originals etc… so that everyone could dance. I would like to let all instructors and DJ’s know that if they want to prevent this problems in the future, they should always burn their CD’s on the lowest setting 4x instead of the “optimal speed” settings of 24x etc… I was given this tip a few years ago and never have had problems since then including last weekend. Next year, I will be sure to send a reminder note to everyone (as well as competitors) regarding this so that it isn’t an issue.

As for open dance, when you have 200 plus people dancing at 3am on both Friday and Saturday (and about 100 of those lasted until 5am), either Louie is doing something really really well or folks are very patient waiting for their requests.  Anyone who knows the line dancing community knows the latter is highly doubtful, so I must again throw out my extreme gratitude to Louie for keeping the energy at a maximum - which is what this event is all about! 

What’s on tap for next year? Well of course your feedback is always welcome, but right now, plans are in the works to increase the Sunday Open Dance time and keep the dance floor going until 4pm. (So keep that in mind when you make your plane reservations….)

Special thanks go out to all of the instructors and especially the volunteer staff who worked hard all weekend with the registration desk, hospitality suite and particularly the very difficult task of putting the floors in!  Tina Veliotis is one of the true professionals out there and thanks to her, reduced my stress level 150% from 2004. I’d name the rest of the staff for you, but I might miss someone. You know who you are and that I love everyone of you like a part of my family.

Those of you who know us, also know that we are very open for additional suggestions and appreciate your direct feedback.  If you attended the event and want to send me feedback to either share on this site or not, please email me!

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