Christchurch Swing Festival - A Colourful Start

It’s time to tell you about my awesome weekend in Christchurch! It couldn’t have been better.

Well, in some ways maybe. I’m thinking of the moment on the plane when I discovered that my toothpaste had come out in my hand bag! Unfortunately it left the most mess on the pretty little red flower I was going to wear in my hair to look beautiful while dancing :-).

The other thing was that I started coming down with a cold the night before I was off to catch my flight. Litres of tea and lemon with ginger wouldn’t get rid of it. Therefore I made sure to take all the ‘lemsips’ I had left from my last cold to make it through the weekend.

That’s it though, only good things from now on :-)!

The first night social dancing had a funny theme: ‘Rubic Cube Party’. Everybody had to dress in as many colours as possible and swap any item after a dance to get closer to wearing one colour only. It said specifically on the program it would be best not to wear anything you don’t want to lose.

Makes perfect sense and I LOVE dressing up! I was just a bit worried about my situation as a traveler. I’d actually bought a couple of tops to have enough to cover 3 days of dancing without having to do some washing :-).

Nothing really to worry about though. The answer was simply op-shop :-)! My good friend Jeremey who hosted this excited swing dancing girl over the weekend took me to a real big one! We had so much fun picking accessories! We spent only a few dollars and walked out with sparkling red glasses, different coloured scarves, spotted ties and some pink fishnet gloves. I got right in the mood creating my outfit in combination with some of Andrea’s clothes she had just sorted out. Andrea is Jeremy’s lovely housemate.

When I first arrived at the venue I didn’t see any colourful people around as I got there a bit early. What I did see through the door though was 3 of the teachers and ‘Echoes of Harlem’ members from Melbourne, who turned out to be the international teachers … How cool is that :-)? This had to be good.

Melbourne teachers Tina, Noni and Jarrod

A few minutes later a lot of people showed up all dressed really silly or converted themselves into colourful individuals in front of my eyes. There were also extra items in a box everyone could help themselves to. I got to chat to a few people and it seemed that whoever I asked where they had come from said: “Dunedin”. 

                



There was quite a big group of them and from the next day it was easy to tell who was part of that as they were wearing awesome handmade ‘dancing dinosaur t-shirts!’Looking down at myself I’d just decided to collect blue when all of us were welcomed and found out that in our welcome pack was a little piece of paper with the colour we had to chase after. More of a challenge that way :-)! I had a look and found a green scrap of paper. I looked around and there weren’t that many green items available but I did my best catching dances with people who were green in some way :-). 

After a couple of dances I couldn’t help but notice Matt (one of the Dunedin people), who was already almost there! He had even managed to put a tight bright green pair of leggings or trousers or whatever they were over his jeans. That looked interesting but helped the green picture tremendously and reminded me a little bit of St. Patrick’s Day for some reason :-).

Anyway, from when I first saw green Matt I kind of gave up on the green and danced for other colours or just for the sake of it :-). We got to see great outfits during the night and it wasn’t easy to vote for the winner. A very creative white outfit made it in the end. 

That wasn’t it though. There was still the neon after party to come. Being a Melbourne girl at the moment I wasn’t wearing anything more than ¾ leggings and a dress with only a couple of the accessions I had left from dancing. 

Let’s put it this way: It was FREEZING outside! My bright idea to find those warm looking green leggings anywhere amongst the leftovers wouldn’t work out and having that silly cold didn’t help either :-(. Brrrrrr!!!…

Luckily I was given a lift to the next ‘Salsa Latina’, which is a lovely little dance studio but wasn’t the warmest place that night. The key was simply dancing, dancing and dancing :-). The DJ competition definitely helped to get me off my chair.

It’s quite funny that all of a sudden I found it very hard to tell who I’d met before as wigs, hats, scarves and a lot of layers had been removed by most dancers. I had to stop introducing myself to avoid more: “but we’ve danced earlier.” :-). I still looked the same though and was happy about any layer left :-).

Sickly me had to leave the after party a little early and was already in bed by 2am to still be alive for a day full of classes in front of me.