Camp Westie

November 2014: Dana was just back from a year in Bulgaria. Michael was running a business in Texas and had just reconnected with his college buddy Robbie on a trip through the North East. Robbie was just past his hardest year of graduate school. Helen was working in DC and reconnected with Robbie at a ballroom event at University of Maryland. Robbie and Dana were newcomers with one event under their belts. Michael was in the scene in Texas. Helen had the most experience because she danced in the DC crowd.

We didn’t have much connection outside of knowing Robbie. But we had something key in common: that our collegiate dance experiences had changed our lives. It’s where we fell in love with the dance. And our experience in amateur college ballroom and social dances taught us what it meant to be a community in dance. 

But the ballroom days were coming to a close. We had found west coast swing and loved how it made us feel. We were inspired.  After so many years in a highly competitive environment, we were hungry for something else. Robbie and Helen brainstormed together an idea for a small event in our small PA town.

Finding a dance space that was affordable to the leadership team and for college students was tricky. Hotels weren’t cheap in State College (the home of Penn State University, occasionally the third largest city in the state on football weekends). That’s when Dana remembered a church campsite about 30 minutes away, a location she’d been to for an event in a previous job. The location had a beautiful gathering space with a wood floor.

We almost cancelled that first event. Just two weeks out, we didn’t have enough signups. So we sent out an email indicating it wouldn’t happen… and then changed our minds. And so we held the first ever Camp Westie in April 2015. And overnight, we became event directors.

The response to that first Camp was overwhelming. We had 27 attendees and they gave us an outpouring of love during and after the event that told us we were onto something. It had heart and even we were shocked at how we left the event with a new connection to ourselves and our dance community. We wanted to try it again and immediately started planning the next year.

We learned each year. We got better at creating an experience that took care of our people. We became known for the restoration people felt after leaving, the connection to the other dancers. Oh, and our food. People raved. We raved. Thanks Ryan Hayes, you really defined us in a profound way!

As of 2020, we’d run 5 camps. 2020 was supposed to be our last year. Time had changed. We were ready to put it down. But the pandemic cancelled our sixth and final event. While we were in a new stage of life, we wanted to also share with you what we’d learned.

I wrote the “Designing Unique Dance Events” ebook and ecourse in response.

Throughout the guide, we share the principles we used to design and build a dance event. In each section summary, we offer the foundational questions you’ll need to ask as you create something truly extraordinary. And to help you answer those questions, we’ll share how we answered them for Camp Westie and share a few stories of how those choices impacted everything.

We aren’t doing this because we think Camp Westie is the only way to have a dance event. We’re doing this because we want you to be able to see yourself in this example and see how it could play out for you. There’s no point in making another Camp Westie. That’s been done and it gave us what we needed while it lasted. There IS a point in seeing more people in the dance community creating experiences that meet their vision of answering the needs and joys of the people we love. Because that’s why we dance in the first place!