Windy City Line Dance Mania
Oct 5 -8, 2006
EVENT DIRECTORS: Mark Cosenza, Glen Pospieszny & Eve Yeaton

Year 4 has been completed and I am finally getting back to a normal routine again.  So I must admit that, each year, we all feel as confident as ever at being able to provide all of the dancers a great time.  Of course, the last minute stuff is always the worst part of doing this, but it wasn't anything that we couldn't handle.

This year's instructor's included many familiar names from previous years as well as a nice mix of new folks:

2006 Windy City Instructors

We also would like to extend our condolences to Peter Metelnick whose Mom passes away over the weekend of the event.  Peter was certainly missed.  Given that I also lost my mom a few years back I certainly can relate to his loss.  Alison Biggs was more than gracious going the extra mile and picking up all of his teaches.  Thank you Alison! 

As for the rest of the crew, a big thanks to everyone as your efforts were certainly appreciated and the dancers had nothing but great things to say about all of you!  The schedule of dances taught can be found here.

Each year we vow to cut down on instructors but we have found it to be impossible at this point given the talent our there.  Also, there are so many different dancers to please and we feel that our current mix of instructors is worth the investment for everyone and most of the rooms were always full.  Expect not too much to change next year, but we plan to add a few new ones to our mix just to keep things fresh.

The Thursday night party kicked things off and this year we were fortunate enough to have the main ballroom ready for everyone since the hotel didn't have the room booked that day.  (Other years we had rooms 4 and 5 opened up for the open dance.)

New this year, we our very first Professional Team Instructor Choreography Competition.  Our two teams consisting of (Team 1) John Robinson, Junior Willis and Bryan McWherter vs. (Team 2) Guyton Mundy, Rachael McEnaney and Joey Warren were both challenged to create a dance in approximately a day and a half.  They had both selected from six pieces of music on Thursday night and presented their creations to the dancers on Saturday afternoon.  The dancers rated both dances on a scale from 1 to 5 with 5 being tops.  Just like Dancing With The Stars, our dancers accounted for 50% of the vote and our Saturday Night Panel of Instructor/Judges accounted for the other 50%.  When all was said and done, both the audience and judges picked Team 1 by a very small percentage.  Personally, I was amazed by how creative both of these dances were.  I was expecting them to be simple and gave each 30 minute slots, but given the complexity of both creations, next year, we will be expanding these teaches to an hour a piece. 

Congratulations to both of our teams, but there could only be one winner and John, Junior and Bryan each got to split the $600 Jackpot prize.  So that means that our Champions will be returning next year to Windy City to defend their crown against a brand new team.  Who will it be?  Stay tuned to find out.


Bryan McWherter, Junior Willis and John Robinson demoed their winning dance Comin' Out.  Here, they are demonstrating how the  dance includes a number of arm variations.

So here we have Racheal doing Guyton and Guyton doing Rachael.... and Joey.... well Joey's doing Joey.  Note Scott Blevins doing his alter ego  to the far right.

Our other Choreography Competition was also a huge success with many wonderful dances coming out it.  Even though there could only be one winner, I suspect that many of these dances have received some terrific exposure and will be taught over the next year.  Congratulations go to our second place winner, Alan Haywood, whose dance Spooky took second place and a $100 prize along with passes to most of the major 2006 events.  Our first place winner Robert Delong, whose dance Less Complicated won by a split decision, is sure to get a lot of exposure over the next year.  We definitely have this one on our teach list!  Robert won $250, the event passes and an invitation to teach at next year's event. 

The judges introduce Robert Delong as they demo his first place Choreography Competition dance, "Less Complicated".

We are careful not to change too much each year with this event because the dancers really seem to enjoy themselves and we don't want to mess with a good thing.  However, based on requests, we did add some daytime Open Dancing, particularly all day on Sunday.   Although we were scheduled to end at 4pm, Louie continued to play as long as the dance floor was still there. (Keep that in mind folks for next year as many more of you may want to consider staying an extra day.)

As in 2005, 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.

DJ Louie gets a visit from Doug & Jackie Miranda

The demos were held on Friday morning for the Friday dances and on Friday night for the Saturday ones.  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.

This year, instead of just going over and describing my list of favorites, I am going to be posting some video clips over the next few weeks so that you can see a lot of the great creations that came from this event.  Be sure to come back and visit http://countryedge.com often to check for these.  As always, Bob Bahr instruction videos and dinner show videos are available

Order your 2006 video of all the dances taught here! 

The Blundy Sisters
 

Sumo Wrestlers Doug Miranda, Joanne Brady and Max Perry were part of the performers in the Dinner Show.
 

We had two Open Dance rooms over the weekend with Louie St. George playing the national favorites and Jill Babinec playing the special requests which included a lot of newly taught dances along a mix of favorites and lesser known dances that people enjoyed watching and considering for future teaches in their areas.  Another popular feature was the nighttime reviews held in Ballrooms 4 and 5.  I was able to post this on the Master Schedule as well as on the rooms so that everyone knew the instructors time slots. This allowed everyone to review every dance taught over the weekend. This event also offered all the dances taught on a computer disc that acted as a paper step book for all of the dances taught. This alleviated having to lug around a lot of paper. Many opted for these and we will continue to offer this in many years to come. If you’d like to order your dances on disc, click here. For an alphabetical listing of all of the dances included, click here!

John Robinson, Frank Cooper & Carole Daugherty

The dinner show was wonderful as always!  We received so many positive comments on it and thanks to everyone who participated.  Bob Bahrs video includes this show and even if you've seen the infamous Blundy Sister's before, there is a lot of "bonus footage" of them playing around during the show.  I personally loved seeing Guyton demo his Choreography Challenge dance in full Blundy Sister attire!  I also must say how welcome it was to hear lovely Yvonne Anderson's singing voice after a year plus absence from the states!  And yes, the hilarity ensured with the "Sumo Wrestlers" - Doug, Max and Joanne.  Rachael, John, Junior and Jackie all wowed the audience with some exquisite dance routines.

Our total numbers are somewhere around the 600 mark as we continue to grow each year.  There is always room for more at with the large dance rooms offered a this fabulous hotel!  A special thanks for our 30 plus group from Japan lead by Martha Ogasawara for checking our event out this year.  We definitely hope they found the trip worth their while and we certainly enjoyed having them visit us.

Our visitors from Japan!

What’s on tap for next year? Well of course your feedback is always welcome, and this was the first year we handed out formal surveys to everyone, so we will be sure to review all of them and keep the comments in mind for next year.  Please keep in mind that we welcome suggestions, but sometimes, a suggestion from some may not be welcome by others, but we will do our best to please as many people as possible.

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 remains my rock throughout all of this and I love her to death for all she has done for us!   .

 

Order An Event DVD      

Order The Event Step Book On Disc