A Week of Dancing Fun!

Last week was full of dancing! First, on Monday, we went to Rendezvous for the dcRolePlay Fundraiser at Dance with Debbie, and it was a blast! In case you don't know, dcRolePlay is a West Coast Swing team on which everyone both leads and follows. The team was founded 10 years ago with the goals of introducing WCS to the LGBTQ community and to promote open role (non-gender based) dancing to the mainstream WCS community.

The point is to encourage all dancers to feel comfortable dancing whatever role(s) they want to dance socially and to make it possible for everyone to do so in WCS competitions. Roger is currently the coach of the team.

This year, dcRolePlay is going to the Emerald City Hoedown in Seattle and the US Open Swing Dance Championships in Los Angeles. We needed to raise funds to help support team members who have difficulty affording these trips. Debbie was gracious enough to host the fundraiser, donating a portion of the proceeds from the dance to the team, having past dcRolePlay member Katia Grigoriants teach the intermediate lesson, giving team members free entry, and letting us hold a big bake sale. We easily exceeded our fundraising goal! Including contributions to the dcRolePlay PayPal account before, during, and after the event, we raised over $1150! A big thank you to Debbie, Mitzi, and everyone who contributed for your support!

Toward the end of the week, we jumped in our car and drove to rural Pennsylvania for Camp Westie, a wonderful weekend of WCS dancing, learning, and camping fun!

We have attended every year for the past several years, and it's always one of our favorite weekends of the year.

Making Camp Westie T-shirts!

This year, camp organizers Michael, Robbie, and Dana brought WCS pros Philippe Berne, Flore Berne (https://www.philandflore.com), Hugo Miguez, and Stacy Kay (http://hugoandstacy.dance) as our camp counselors, and we loved taking their workshops, playing silly games with them, and getting to know them better.

The social dancing was great all weekend. Roger DJ'd for several hours on Friday. Everything about the weekend was fun, but our favorite moment was when we sat around the campfire, making s'mores, singing songs, and telling stories.

The wonderful Camp Westie staff, Flore, Drew (with the hat), Hugo, Stacy, Michael, Chef Ryan, Robbie, Philippe, and Dana!

Mané and Julia, best friends forever!

We highly recommend Camp Westie for everyone, but make sure to leave space for us! :)