Southport Weekender February 2013

The weekend was amazing. I can’t tell you how much I loved it. At the weekender there are classes and freestyles.

I think I did 8 classes over the course of the weekend but I’m not sure. The best class I did was the advanced class called Cream by Tim Saint. That class made my brain go into over drive. As usual all of the classes I did were men over as appose to women. It was great fun as the men had to move round. Now they know what it feels like to be us women.

There were two special hours one on Saturday and one on Sunday. They were swinger’s hours. This is where some of the ladies get dressed up in the 1950’s style swingers dresses and dance to swinger’s music. The Saturday one was DJ by Chris Uren and the Sunday one by Mike Ellard (head of Ceroc aka big boss) and done in the pub. I did go to both of them. I found that Chris Uren’s hour was better because he played songs that were swing songs but you could also Modern jive to. I felt that Mike was playing pure swing most of the time so I found it a bit challenging but good fun. As it was a modern jive weekender most people were modern jiving. Not many people knew how to swing. The ladies in the swinger’s dresses looked amazing.

On Saturday evening there was the cabaret which was done by Razy someone from Britain’s Got Talent 2011 doing that Matrix dance he did. There was also the great escapee competition. This is where you can get up and compete to go to the London champs to compete with other people who have done this competition at other weekenders to be the best. Sadly no one I knew competed. The ones who one where these two ladies who clearly seem like they have been dancing a long time together, Razy’s performance was alright but I felt like I’d seen it all before. It was also hard to see some of it as he did floor work. The audience seemed impressed.

This time round I felt that I had a great time and I that wasn't missing out if I wasn't doing the classes. At previous weekenders I felt like I was missing out if I wasn't learning. There were lots of people there that I knew from local venues which was great. I could always find someone I knew to talk with for a bit. I didn't feel like I was on my own even though I was staying by myself. When I went last February I did feel like I was on my own as I didn't know many people. This time was probably my best weekender yet.

The music was different depending on who was DJ. The best DJ’s were Chris Uren, Chris Baker and Jonathon Gammon. They are also the ones who do my local venues. These DJ’s played a good range of music from the older songs to the modern ones. Lots of people seemed to be on the dance floor when they were DJ. The other DJs seemed to be playing music that they wanted to hear rather what the audience wanted to dance to. There were some strange songs played.

Line Dancing

Chris Baker got us all at about 3am Sunday morning doing the Got to Get Funky line dance. The only thing I can say to that is it would have been better and probably more doing it if someone was doing it on stage. There were quite a few doing it. Most of them were from Yorkshire.

I had so much fun but was really tired on Monday. I will defiantly be booking for the next one in June. Can’t wait!!!

Here is a video that someone made: