Watch this video to see what a Country Dance Festival looks like on the inside.

Are you interested in going to a Country Western Dance Festival and are looking to see what’s inside? Well here’s your chance! Ever since I’ve started Country Western Dancing I’ve been attending the Calgary Dance Stampede Festival and it’s always been a great venue to learn and meet new people that love dancing.

If you stay in the Hotel where the festival is held you usually get a beautiful skyline view of the city with excellent customer service and it also comes with the huge convenience of saving time and money on travelling to and from the hotel.

The cons if you don’t want to stay at the hotel can be with parking at these venues since sometimes it can be very costly to park in downtown areas. I spent only about $25 this time around but it can get higher if you don’t plan for parking or have trouble in a downtown area finding cheaper parking.  So if you are going to a festival and don’t have a room booked I suggest you call the hotel and ask them about nearby parking just in case they don’t provide any affordable rates.  Another option would be to check parkopedia.com for cheap parking prices for your city.

Once you are in the hotel you will be greeted by the front desk people who will direct you to the registration desk where you pay to get into the festival and get your wrist band and schedule of the event.  As you are walking through the lobby or hallways of the event the first thing you probably will see is the vendors.  Then eventually you will find the workshop rooms.  The teachers in these workshops are world class dancers and there are usually lots of people attending them.  Usually in these workshops you will get a chance to dance with everyone if the teachers have you rotate to the next person after each move you learn in the lesson.  This is a great opportunity for you to meet new people.

Usually while these workshops are going on during the day there will be pro-am dance competitions which are competitions for amateur dancers only.  Pro-Am meaning Professional and Amateur Dancers dancing with each where the Amateur is judged and scored in the competition while the professional just acts as the mediator to help the amateur do the dance. These competitions are regulated and structured so that the amateur can participate in a competition series where they can move up the ladder to the World Country Dance Competitions and compete there for the Number One spot in their skill level category whether it is beginner, novice, intermediate, advanced, pro or master.

There are others competitions for couples as well.  Where you can as an amateur bring an amateur dance partner to compete with you.  This form of competition would be called a “strictly couples” dance competition. If you don’t have a partner you can usually find someone who will compete with you there but just make sure you sign up before the deadline it could be 1 hour to 24 hours before the competition starts so find out find as soon as you can.

There are also competitions where if you can’t find a partner you can sign up solo and get a random dance partner where they draw names out of a hat for you to be randomly selected with someone else and these are called Jack and Jill competitions.  There are many more styles of competitions but that is the simplest and shortlist of the styles that I’m going to be presenting in this video.

So far we’ve talked about the Workshops and Competitions but let’s now look at the Social Dances.  These Dances are also called Dance Parties.  Sometimes they put on Dance Themes for you to dress a certain way for whatever theme they propose.  Check it out if you are interested in participating in some sort of dress up theme.

These social dances gather the best dancers and avid social dancers of all the dances in your area if you attend these events.  So if you are looking for good dancers and are looking to learn this is the absolute best place to improve your dancing skills because everyone here loves to dance and wants to dance with you.

After the party on the last day there are awards given out for all the competitions and usually there are lots of competitions.  There could be as many as twenty competitions and the awards can take some time to be given out.  But suffice it to say it is a great feeling when you get an award.  I won first place last year for the Two Step Novice strictly competition and I have to say it felt good to win.  So this is what it’s like to be at a Dance Festival and we hoped you liked and appreciated the video.  If you are looking to learn more about Country Western Dancing and related topics then like our video and subscribe to our channel here!  Thanks for watching!