Wow, what can we say, it was Kind of a Big Deal, and it’s taken us a week to recover! But thank you to all who participated near and far. For those who don’t know what this weekend was, it was a crazy complicated event to run!

First we had three nights of Gordon Webster and his spectacular band! Including a rehearsal night with a Question & Answer session. We had band rehearsals where we needed to open up the Whistle Stop so the band could get in. We had a 7 ft, Steinway B, grand piano we had delivered which needed to be tuned, so more trips to the Whistle Stop…all because we wanted everything to be perfect for for our first live recording at Boston Swing Central. There were band members flying in, some coming in by train. There was a lot to do behind the scenes. There were hotels to arrange, all kinds of things to take care of.

And we had a Kickstarter Campaign which we ran to also help raise funds, we blew threw our expected budget of $18,000 for the project. Gordon had some additional travelling musicians he wanted on the project and we also had more gear we needed to rent than previously thought. Overall this project is on track for about $22,000 right now, still estimated as there is still a lot to get done, but you get the idea! It is expensive. So, BSC ended up giving Gordon all of our proceeds from the weekend dances towards this project as well as he really needed our help to get this album done. We’ll have more here as we make progress. We thank everyone for their support.

Alongside the Gordon Webster recording we also had Andy & Nina doing a workshop. Their classes got us to think about our dancing in ways we don’t normally think and on top of that, they were a lot of fun. We hope you got to attend some of them, the wait list was ridiculously long and we apologize, the Whistle Stop is limited in capacity and we wanted it to remain a good experience with a relatively small class size. We could’ve rented a larger venue, but it would’ve been in a gymnasium or something and would’ve added to the costs and convenience of the weekend. We’re sorry if people were frozen out, we might try to do somethings different next year, we’ll have to see what transpires, but Andy & Nina will most likely be back in 2014!

We also declared that a few dancers are Kind of a Big Deal! And they were! Our first Jack & Jill competitions run by head judge, Gina Helfrich. That was a lot of fun and I think Traffic Cop, Jen Stout and the Librarian, Alain Fragman were declared by us to be Kind of a Big Deal in the Advanced J&J. And to Walter at Tino’s aka Diana Shiroma and her randomly selected partner Eddie Li (who competed as Stage Manager). These two we declared Kind of a Big Deal for the Open J&J! Congrats to all the other participants and winners…in our hearts, you’re all Kind of a Big Deal!