DouDouLe.

Note to self: two intense dance weekends in a row might be pretty hard for your body! I felt like a dance junkie on Sunday evening when waking up after seriously needed three hour afternoon nap, feeling absolutely horrible, but still crawling out from the bed and getting ready for Casablanca's Sunday dancing - the final party for DouDouLe.

There is one wonderful person living in Brisbane who is passionate about building the Latin dance scene here, and he is the man behind last weekend's DouDouLe Latin Dance Camp. I have high respect to those people who do these kind of things and work really hard to make dance events to happen. Therefore I'd like to express my highest thanks for Jean-Luc for organizing an amazing weekend of dance.

The idea behind DouDouLe is to bring different dance schools together under the same roof to share their love to dancing. The workshops included huge variety of dance styles: Salsa, Zouk, Bachata, Kizomba, Samba, Reggeaton, Tango, Samba de Gafieira and ChaCha. I'm proud to say that I went to my first ever Salsa class during the weekend! (Result: nah, still not the dance for me.) Other than that I mostly wandered between the Zouk workshops, but attended as a leader. Maybe I should have taken advantage the variety and tried something new, but how could have I missed Kadu&Larissa's or Alisson&Audrey's classes?

I love this shot; my first great leader picture!

However, when organizing any event, you cannot please everyone, and when there is so many different people, it is simply impossible. Don't take me wrong, I had heaps of fun during the weekend, but for me there was something crucial missing. I go to dance events to dance as much as I can with as many people as I can.  I like learning new things in workshops, but it is the dance parties that I'm the most excited about. The best memories from every dance event are from the dance floor. The parties are the places where I can be blown away with amazing dances and unexpected dance connections. What didn't work for me in DouDouLe was that it didn't give me enough opportunities to create those precious memories. Too much time was used for dance performances and other entertainment. Few dance performances are nice to watch, but not more than ten in a night, especially when you are surrounded by people you are craving to dance with. People with who you might not have an opportunity to dance with after that night.

I loved the idea of bringing different dancers and dance styles together. However, I think this concept would have worked better if those dance styles included only partner style of dances. After watching the performances for hours and waiting the party to get started, I was more than happy to finally get to the dance floor. Shortly after getting into the dance mood, however, my long-waited party was interrupted by a group of Samba musicians who successfully made the Samba girls crazy, but left the ones who were there for partner dancing to wait for a 'proper' music to kick back in. When it finally did, most of the dancers who I was hoping to dance with had disappeared or gotten themselves drunk. It is not that I regard partner dancing better than solo dancing, but that is what I went there to do. If I wanted to party dance solo, I could go to a night club. I want to highlight that this is what I felt, and that I don't want to underestimate the hard work everybody had put into the weekend.

That said, the weekend was definitely worth going to. The atmosphere was so warm and welcoming, maybe because it was a closed area where everybody stayed the whole weekend. I was finally able to dance with Alisson, a Zouk teacher from Perth, had the best Kizomba dances in Australia with a dancer from Melbourne, and experienced couple of other strong dance connections. It is amazing feeling when you start to dance with someone and you feel like being one with the other. It is like every inch of you were synchronized. It feels so good. On top of that, I was surrounded the whole weekend by all my wonderful friends I have met while dancing in Brisbane. With that setting, how couldn't I feel like a top of the world?

If I would like to compare the two dance weekends, the best of Swingsation was that I learned so much, but in DouDouLe I felt more like being united and sharing my passion to dance with my friends. DouDouLe was a relaxed and fun event with open-minded and friendly people, all connected by a big heart for dancing. Thank you everybody for making me feel so happy and loved during the weekend.