French Open!!  It was a great and memorable last year at the Disneyland New York hotel in Paris!!! We were so happy to be a part of the staff again this year.. French open is always a great time with great friends!

We had 4 workshops throughout the weekend, all of which were really fun and a good time!

We loved watching all of the contests, especially the Pro Am routine division, and all the junior contests!!  It’s so nice to see these new divisions in Europe… and we really hope to see them at more events across Europe.

We also had a good time dancing in the Pro show on Saturday night with our MOVTigh routine with Olivier & Virginie Massart. It was a really entertaining show because it was mixed with the Zouk congress in the same hotel!  So there were 10 numbers, 5 Zouk and 5 West Coast Swing/Lindy.

The Sunday Pro Jack n Jill show was also really fun, since it was Disney themed and we all got to pick which songs we wanted to dance to!  I danced with the wonderful Jerome Fernandez, and Maxime with the beautiful Emeline Rochefeuille…. But I think the highlight was the Circle of Life, preformed by Ben Morris & Coleen Man…. with the special appearance from Billie Massart hahahah If you didn’t see it…. go find it on youtube!!!! 🙂

We also started the new season of Swing 16 this weekend…. and the finale will be at FOWCS 2018!  So follow the season 2 around Europe to participate in the finale!!  Next up on the tour we have Dtownswing in 3 weeks 😉

We hope to see you all next year at French Open in the new location!!  Get ready for another awesome year!! 🙂

-Maxime & Torri 😉

We were so happy to be back in London (well not really in London…. but with the London community!!! haha)  We love our annual trip out to work for Catriona and see the progression of her group of dancers!

This year, we had 2 days of workshops.. with 4 hours of workshops each day!  The classes all went by so fast because we were having so much fun with the attendees!  We had so many laughs with everyone… and really always enjoy our time with this group!  It was nice to see many familiar faces, but also to meet so many new people too!!

The dance of Saturday night was packed!!  The room was so hot from everyone dancing, but filled with a great energy!  It was great to see all the people who came out for the social party to hang out for the night!

The weekend flew by so fast, it felt like we were only there for a day!!  We wish we could stay longer to hang out with everyone more… but there’s always next time!!

Thank you everyone for the great  memories and dances!  We appreciated everyone’s focus and hard work during the classes… and the fun attitude at the party 🙂  Thank you so much Cat for bringing us back again to work with your group!  You know we love it!!

See you again in September for MSO!!  And if we didn’t get the chance to dance with you last weekend…. save us a dance then!!

Thanks everyone!

-Maxime and Torri 😉

WEST IN LYON!!!

This is always an event very special for us, since Maxime is one of the hard working event directors.. along with Virginie Massart, Arnaud Perga and David Riquelme!!  These 4 do such a great job organizing this event…. It was year #9, and better than ever!  Everything runs so smoothly because they have all the organization down now!  It is amazing to see the behind the scenes of how the event is put together!

I feel so honored to be the chief judge of the weekend… it was the first event that hired me as chief judge, so it will always have a special place in my heart 🙂  The scoring team was amazing this year… having John Lindo and Tom Hill helping me with the scoring while I organized the band of judges 🙂  Everyone helping out really made the competitions run so smoothly! I think this year ran even better than the previous year!  Thanks everyone for helping!

We taught one class for each of the levels at the event, and the classes went great!  We really enjoy getting to have some time with the attendees in the classes!! We also performed in the Saturday night Pro show with Olivier and Virginie again… doing our new routine! We had a great time performing with our good friends again 🙂

Saturday night was also the highlight of the weekend for the Swing 16 European tour season 1 finale!!   We had been waiting all year for this moment… and it was pretty epic!!  We were so proud to organize this contest and so happy with the results!  The winners took home 1450 euros each!!  Those winners were Damien Favier (France) and Vivien Feld (Germany)!!!  Congrats you two!!!

Thank you everyone who made WIL a special event…. and we can’t wait to see you next year for the 10th anniversary!!!!!  See you then!!!

-Maxime and Torri 😉

Well it was another great year at the Euro Dance Festival in Germany!  We love attending this event every year!  The venue is just incredible!  So amazing that they get to rent out the whole Europa park for the event… and the majority of the hotels in the park too!

Every style of dance is represented at this event, which makes the bar atmosphere the best of any event we have ever attended!  Theres always a little bit of every dance involved in the battles in the Colleseo bar!  If you have ever been to Euro dance, then you know that the bar is the place to be each night!  It’s such a great time!

Each year, the West Coast Swing scene gets a little bigger… and this year was by far the biggest yet!!  There were more teachers than before, and a lot of great shows as well!  We were happy to be a part of the show with a new routine we choreographed with our good friends Olivier and Virginie Massart 🙂  It was the first time we performed our routine, and it was really fun!

We really hope to come back to this event, because it is always a weekend of great fun!!  We love teaching the workshops, and watching all the shows!  If you have never been to this event, and love to see all different styles of dance under one roof, then Euro Dance Festival is for you!!  We hope to see you there next year!!

-Maxime and Torri 😉

This was our first time at this event in Zurich…. and we had a BLAST!!  Working for Nicolas and Linda was easy and really fun!!  It was a nice weekend…. 6 hours of workshops, not a whole lot of judging, 2 fun demos… and a LOT of social dancing!!!

We liked getting to work with each of the levels, and really getting to change up our classes with each level!  We especially loved the very last hour of the weekend, with the highest Adv/AllStar group….. if you were there… you know why!! 😉 hahaha

We did a quick pro demo on Friday night.. and then a pro JnJ on saturday night…. where we randomly did a partner swap with Ben & Victoria!!  It was a fun contest, and everyone was such an inspiration… as always 🙂

I think Maxime’s favorite part of the whole weekend was during the party on Saturday night when there were a couple platters of cheese and grapes for everyone to snack on!!  I don’t think we will ever have grapes as good as those ones!!! 😉

The only regret we have is not being there long enough to get to go into the city…. and booking our flight so early on monday that we couldn’t hang out at th party as long as we wanted to!!!!

Thank you everyone for all the good conversations and awesome dances!!!

I have been back in the US since this event…. and will be returning next week for Eurodance Festival!!

See you again soon in my second home (anywhere in Europe! lol)

-Maxime and Torri 😉

This is coming late because I have been so crazy working on getting our new DVDs ready for you all!!

But I still wanted to do a blog for this little weekend!

We really enjoy going to Lille… the atmosphere is one of the best all year long!!  We love working for the AWCS team of Mikl, Pauline and Val!!  You guys are all so sweet and funny and treat us so good!!  We love the energy of all the classes because everyone is there to have a good time with us! 🙂

We love to see this community grow and see all the new faces that joined us for the first time this year, alongside all the familiar faces we saw throughout the last year 🙂

We are sad that this year we are not able to attend the event in Lille again in June… but we promise we will be there in 2018!!!

Thank you everyone for an awesome weekend!!  We hope you had a fun time with us!! 🙂

Merci beaucoup!

Bisous, bisous…

-Maxime and Torri 😉

Another great year at Budafest… which we had no doubts about!!

We love so many things about this event!  The location, the hotel, the organizers, the dancing, the staff… pretty much everything!!  We really look forward to attending this event every year.  It was so nice to see so many Americans attending this year!!  I think its amazing that Americans are starting to travel to European events.. and I hope to see a lot more of it!

This event is so well organized, the timing of the schedule is just about perfect!  So much happens in one day, and there are so many attendees of different levels who participate in different workshops… It must be so difficult to plan it all and make sure the timing works for everyone!  Making sure the teachers have practically the same amount of workshops and levels can’t be an easy task!  But the team really has it down great!!  Each year we see improvements in the schedule that makes it a little better each year!!  It really makes a difference when an event has directors that put their whole heart into the organization of the event!!  We appreciate all Adam, Rita and Gabor do for the event!!

For the workshops, it seemed like there were even more people than last year!!!  There isn’t enough space in each of the rooms for all the people who want to take the classes… so they have to split the levels into different groups!  Level 2 had 1 group, Level 3 had 2 groups, Level 4 had 3 groups, and Level 5 had 2 groups!!  Each group was so full we still barely had space to dance, but it was a great atmosphere in all the classes!!  We know it’s a lot of information for all the attendees who take every class they can, so we tried to make our classes as fun as possible and make sure everyone had a good time 🙂

We ran the last preliminary contest of the Euro Swing 16 on Thursday of Budafest… We are starting to get super excited for the finale at West in Lyon!!!!  The competitions were packed, again with more people than the previous years!  I believe this event has the most competitors in Europe… and it may even be safe to say in the world!! There are so many International people who travel to this event, it really makes the atmosphere quite amazing!  I heard over the weekend that there was a live streaming of the event, and they had the most viewers watching on Saturday night than any other event in Europe!  That is pretty incredible and I wish it will only grow from there!!

The pro shows were inspiring, as always, and it was a true honor to be dancing alongside some of our best friends 🙂  We had a fun time in our demo together, with a little tribute to our friends Jordan and Tat 😉 and a great time in our JnJ with Ben Morris and Ninie Grondin!  We also both participated in the Pro-Winners JnJ like last year… where I drew the Novice winner Richard and Maxime drew the Intermediate winner Anna 🙂

We had a fun weekend with everybody…. our only regret is that we didn’t have the chance to social dance with everyone as much as we would have liked to!!!  But we hope to see everyone around at another event soon!!!

Until next time….

-Maxime and Torri 😉

Second year… even better than the first!!!  I am so grateful to be included in the staff at this wonderful event… I think it is such an important part of helping the community grow into stronger dancers!!  In case you haven’t heard about this event… West’s Angels was created last year by Olivier Massart, in order to help the ladies grow in their styling and personal dancing.  It was built for the ladies and was taught by top followers, with the help of some adv/all star leaders.  It was great last year, but the guys got a little jealous that there wasn’t really a lot for them…..

So this year… guys were welcome to come to some men’s styling classes as well as the normal group classes!  I think it was a huge success this year!!

The staff was the same ladies as before: myself, Emeline, and Virginie Massart, with the addition of the lovely Henriette!  The guys were Maxime, Arnaud and Olivier!  We all loved the set up this year.. the classes were mixed between solo ladies, solo guys and group classes!  We think it was a good balance for everyone! Each level of ladies had a total of 4 hours of solo classes… and the guys had 2… so it was still focused on the ladies, but the guys got something as well 😉

The event also had WSDC points for the first time this year!  Friday night we ran the swing 16 competition… which was a fun atmosphere as always! Saturday we had all the JnJ comps… Newcomer, Novice, Intermediate and Advanced/All Star!

It really was a great weekend… Still focused on workshops and styling, but with some of the feel of a typical WCS event… We liked the balance of the event and felt that this year was even better than the last year… We hope this event continues to grow…. but not too much or we won’t have any space to dance!! It was already a little tight this year! haha So if you want to be a part of next year, book early to reserve your spot!!  Hope to see you there!

-Maxime and Torri 😉

This was our second year back at Rock Bottoms… and it was just as fun and awesome as the first time!!! We just love the people who organize this event!  They create such a great atmosphere at the parties of the event.. it really helps everyone have a great time with them!!

It is mainly a Modern Jive weekend, with a little bit of ballroom and some West Coast Swing.  We taught WCS along with Kevin and Aggie Town!  It was fun to work with them and get a little closer!  It is also really great for us to hang out with these Modern Jive teachers we don’t typically see anywhere else!

There are no competitions, because most people are learning WCS for the first time that weekend!  So there are just classes, demos from the teachers, and fun social parties (which in England always means a tea party as well!!) It’s a cool weekend for us, and we love to hang out with everyone!

The best part of  the weekend for us was of course the Sunday night “surprise show”…. which, like last year, was a funny disaster!  Last year we each had a speaking part, involving the theme of the weekend… which was the 50s…. This year the theme was food….. so we were all scared as to what would happen on Sunday night!!  When we found out we were going to be a part of a “cooking show”…. we got even more scared haha… Basically, I was the face, and Maxime was my arms…. and we had to “bake” a hamburger cake…. We had to crack the eggs (which Maxime found the best way since he couldn’t see the bowl was to use my head to crack them….. As you can imagine, we were all covered in food!!!!  Eggs, flour, chocolate, wine, red bull, candy, whipped cream…. EVERYWHERE!!!  I think there was even a point where a full cake went flying when they were told they wouldn’t advance to the next round… hahahaha

Overall, it was a great weekend and we had such a fun time with everyone!!!!  We love being in Torquay, and having one of the most memorable weekends of the year!!  Thank you again to Hev, Andy, Tor and Jon for having us for another year 🙂 We hope to see you all again soon!

-Maxime and Torri 😉

Such a fun weekend!!! It was my first time in Poland, and I really hope it won’t be my last!!  I would love to visit when it’s a little warmer, but it doesn’t matter when you are in the hotel all weekend 🙂

We had heard so many great things about this event, and were really excited to be a part of it this year.  The hotel is wonderful!!  Really nice rooms, good food, fun bar, and great location!  It also really helps make the event even better when the organizers are great people!  Wayne and Aggi are so sweet and always want to make everyone happy!  They are always around answering questions and changing things to make more people happy!  I think thats a really important part of organizing an event!

We had a lot of fun on Friday… Our favorite class was the “Spooky Line Dance” class…. where we choreographed a fun dance to the Ghostbusters theme song!  We really enjoyed creating it and dancing it during the party with everyone!  We loved how many people didn’t know the routine, but still got up to try and learn it with the group!!  It was also fun to get all dressed up in Halloween costumes for the Strictly competitions…. Some people went so full out, it really made for a great atmosphere at the party!

Saturday was another fun night, with all the competition finals, pro shows, and another huge party!  The music was really great Saturday night…. My favorite set was Steve Hunt’s throwback set!!  Some fun 90’s songs that we haven’t heard in awhile that are so good to dance to!  It kept us up later than we had planned, which was okay since we had Daylight Savings working on our side and giving us an extra hour of sleep 😉

Sunday was a long day of work for us, filled with workshops and privates… But we were happy to relax and have a fun night when we were finished!  There was a fun contest Sunday night… an All European with a battle for the final!  It was a fun atmosphere to let loose for the last night!  We had a great weekend with the other staff… Ibi & Irina, Sean & Courtney and Diego & Jessica 🙂

Thanks for all the dances everyone, and for a great weekend! Hope to see everyone soon! 🙂

-Maxime and Torri 😉