Messages

Come by and take a lesson or two.  And hardly any feet will be stepped on.

I personally do not see a problem for these shoes, though others might disagree with me.

I think the only time I got the visit the dealers room any length of time this year was during the staff time on Monday, besides like 20 minutes on Friday night right before it closed.  It takes dedication to be staff, because the breaks are rare.

The dance floor was a tad small.

I don't know if we can get a bigger dance floor, and if we do that means less tables and chairs for people to sit on.   ;D

I was glad a lot of people were out their dancing, we wouldn't have been able to fit even a third of the people that were on this year's dance floor than the floor we had for 2009.

For marking water cups, I am just worried where would we get sharpies for that many people and what happens when they run out or people take them home with them.  It is not bad to keep the cup with you at your location of your items or friends such as a table or chair.  Or maybe even use a different cup each time.

As far as I know we had a rover downstairs at the Fairmont, and a rover at the door making sure the dress code was enforced, maybe that needs to be clarified for next year.

The main feedback that I got from talking to people who attended:

A) The solo dancing (Thriller, conga line, macarena) while enjoyable for the participants was a danger to people on the floor since the solo dancers were not really looking out where they were going.  It wasn't so bad for the spot dances, i.e. swing/salsa, but when the dance was a travelling dance like foxtrot, the chances of accidents went up.  One follower mentioned that she accidentally stomped on someone's foot because they rolled in during their line dance and she stepped backwards.  

B) I got blizzarded by DJ requests.  I will comment here the same way I replied during the ball:  if you have requests, we had the forum thread open for at least four months.  We don't take requests at the ball because if every 20th person who went to the ball requested a song, we would have a request list that would be longer than the actual playlist at the ball.  I might add that I loved the response I got when I mentioned that - "Well, just pick the good ones."  My civil reply was to ask how THAT would be decided.

C) We had some information gaps that luckily did not derail anything substantially. Even so, we still had questions on things that were either clearly stated here on the forum or printed out in all the media at FanimeCon.  I'm not sure how it can be addressed.

D) The volume of the music at the Ball was a little uneven.  Some songs I could hear clearly.  Some I could probably hear clearly if it was an empty ballroom with no crowd noise.  Some songs I was lucky to hear at all.  And some were a little loud.

Okay, enough of the negatives.  I got universally positive comments about the demos at Stage Zero and the B&W Ball.  The mixers worked.  I didn't receive any substantial complaints about the lessons.  The ballroom was beautiful and the floor rocked (shoutout to Frank Carricato of American Portable Dance floor, his staff and the people who worked on putting it together and broke it down after fun and games on Sunday).  The atmosphere was electric throughout the evening.

Some personal notes: Apologies to the people during the ball that I declined giving lessons to due to fatigue or lack of memory.  I tried looking for you guys but you got lost in the throng.  Apologies to the students in my classes who got mercilessly flogged by my snarkiness.  If it makes you feel better, I'm like that only with people who I'm comfortable around :).  Thanks to my fellow staff/instructors/assistants for being a bunch of nice people (Rebecca, Ming Sum, Sam, Josh, Kevin, Mark, David, Craig and Travis come to mind).  Thanks to Jim for giving me this opportunity to just be myself.  Hope I didn't horrify you :).  Finally, thanks to Alaina, my shadow in teaching and dancing this past weekend.  If I accomplished anything this past weekend, she had a large part in it.    

         

Fellow assistant/instructor Kevin here to make a few comments about this years Ball before I go to bed.  This years was better than last years, with a better floor (this one did not fall apart), dance lessons were more organized (thank you David for the syllabus), and with a bigger floor we could get more people out on the dance floor at once.  Just to respond to some of Alfred's comments.

1.  If we saw this happening we tried to stop it as soon as possible, but with some many bodies out on the floor it was hard to see clearly at times.  Maybe a reminder by Jim about no conga lines, etc. would be helpful for next year.  Most the people doing this did not want to dance with partners and felt that this was more of rave type dance (don't know if I am using the right word), maybe more of a dnace where you could jump in place or form random conga lines.

2. Not much to comment here except use the forums, or use the Black and White Ball email with your requests and we will consider them, that does not mean we will play the song if we do not feel it is a danceable tune.

3. That is on print, not much we can do about that than other than remind them before the Con starts.

4. I believe the volume issue requires a rethinking of how we listen to next years playlist.  Now that we know what the room sounds like with over 900 people in it at once, and the acoustics, we will have to more particular on the sound of the beat.  Could we make the volume of the song higher, I know David tempo adjusted some songs could something similar be done for volume with having the up the volume on the sound board constantly.

Now the question becomes how can we top this year, we can't get a bigger ballroom, the Imperial is the biggest in San Jose and the floor will be the same.  So please continue with your suggestions and comments, this was a lot better than last year.  Also thanks for all the instructors that showed up that were listed to show up that was a great help.

I like the tango, it can be both beginning and intermediate.

Glad to see the Black Suit rovers will be back in style. 

Though I got mistaken for one at the BWBall last year when I was the instructor and I would stand outside the door taking a break and getting some air people showed their badges.

Though still glad to see the rovers are bringing back the suit.

For people living in the Sacramento area, there are many places to go out social dancing and learn dances.  Such as The Ballroom and Midtown Stomp, Tango by the River and more.  You just do not have to be in the Bay Area to social dance.  ;)

For the tango we might have to abandon anime music, I have not heard any tango music.  I would prefer music like "Libertango" or even "Roxanne" (though that might confuse people more), I think Roxanne has a bit of a long introduction and then towards the end it gets really quiet and people think it is over until it gets loud again right for the end, I have danced "Roxanne" with an experienced partner and she knew what was happening, but inexperienced people might not know..

Waltz's for now I think should not be Viennese, since we are not teaching that style (at least not at this moment), so something that might be as Viennese (not that I have a problem with the Viennese Waltz).

I am not a big fan of WCS, I believe it should only be for intermmediate lessons since it can be a pain to remember all the correct steps besides adding turns.

I like ECS, Tango, and Cha-Cha.

I think dancing on cement like the dealers hall floor would be harder on my knees that a wooden floor like we had, even with some of the problems.

I am just going to point out here, my post was the things that I saw that could be looked at to work on, not always the parts that I enjoyed, which were many.

Jim talking to someone I know after the dance he said that it was a little dark in the room and kind of hard to see other people that were dressed in dark colors on the dance floor.  I would kind of agree with him, it was at times hard to see some people who were dressed in dark colors on the dance floor.

-Kevin

As an assitant/iinstructor myself I would like to hear comments about how the classes went.

-Kevin

Another one of the assistants/instructors, Kevin, here replying to Jim's post and Dan's post as well.

I must agree with Dan that the floor was not in the best shape, even about an hour in, I did try to keep the people I danced with away from that area.  My feet were really sore at the end, even talking with some of the others at the end (Samantha and Josh) there feet were sore as well.  I felt that the floor made it more difficult to lead, to me personally I have found sticky floors make it harder for me to lead personally because I need a little give and such and I can feel where my feet are.

Yeah the tango was a particular problem, and the other dance was the waltz where people would just run across the floor.  I did run into the problem of groups of people just standing in the middle of the floor and either not dancing or dancing in a group of three or more and either running into other people or making it hard to get around them.  I got the opposite I danced the tango three times with the same person because she wanted to dance the tango with someone who actually knows the steps, I can lead a corte (spelling?) just as well as I can lead The Door or The Fan. 

We had to scramble to find enough people to help with the swing class on Sunday, I mean it was nuts with the number of people their, and Travis did an excellent job.  Thankfully Samantha was there to help fill up the slack and some of the new people that decided to help out over the weekend.  Dan I have to also thank you and Elizabeth for coming back early so you could help out on the floor.  Yeah it was annoying on Sunday when I would look at the schedule and see names of people I had not even met, and wondering are we going to have enough.

Clock-on Sunday when I was at the computer up on the stage I did not know if there was a set procedure of when we had to tell the instructors how much time they had left.  Generally I would start off at time at 15 minutes left, not always by shouting but by using hand signals until you noticed.  I know that might not have been enough. 

I had a fun time at the Ball, hopefully everyone I danced with had a good time.  Hopefully everyone I did not dance with had a good time as well and that they all come back next year and bring some friends.  My comments are not meant to say that the Ball was a failure, but that even in success there is room for improvement.

-Kevin Winter