The most comprehensive review of Dutch Zouk Congress 2014 by Fabian ( A guest Reviewer )

Dutch Zouk congress review 23-28.10.2014

Hello everyone

This is my first guest review here on my friend Kazuyo’s

webpage. From what I have been told by one of the teachers I am not writing about just one of the biggest congresses (measured on the number of attendees) but even the world’s biggest zouk congress this year. Judging from the people attending it was certainly my biggest congress so far. Apparently the Friday party was around 800 people and the Saturday party even a few over

1000 peeps. ( *Fabian is an experienced, authentic zouk dancer who reside in Manchester, UK. He came from Germany )

Pro:

1. loads of professional well known teachers in one congress

2. timely start and finish of workshops, causing no delays

3. well organised taxi system going from venue to hotels

4. well organised lunch and dinner

5. very international attendees

6. easy registration

Contra:

1. very crowded workshops (temperatures in all 4 rooms quite warm around 21C and air sometimes incredibly thick due to poor ventilation)

2. very crowded parties (temperatures in both rooms hot &

humid)

3. Only 1 Dj playing for 2 party rooms, although they had

Dj sets in each room but during the workshops it already

showed that the walls weren’t thick enough to isolate the

sound from one room going to the other.

4. no freely provided water, unless you would use the taps in the toilets

5. very little sitting opportunities for tired dancers to watch

others

6. quite costly ( TBC regarding what is costly ) - crowdedness

and costliness lead to me to feel as if the event was more

about making money then promote the joy of dancing Zouk

It also made me feel less intimate as people stayed with

their groups and less mixing occurred as might have on

smaller congresses.

7. Unfortunately that dance venue and hotel were not ombined

so you were faced to go the cold outside to get to the hotel

8. the big party rooms 1 & 2 were separate from the other

workshop rooms 3,4,5 and required you to go outside in the

cold November weather to change the rooms

Travel:

I think, getting to the congress once you are in the Netherlands is quite easy.

We flew from Manchester to Brussels and took a train over Rosendaal to EttenLeur station, which was closest to the dance venue Studio 76.

Unfortunately we had to get up at 3am to get a 6.30am Ryanair flight which then was delayed for 3 hours due to technical and organisational problems but we had the full day ahead of us so we just had to get on with it. But yeah that happened in the UK not in the Netherlands.

Hotel & DZC shuttle:

We stayed in one of the nearby hotels Huis ten Bosch which was around 30 walking minutes from the venue. The room was fine just like any other normal hotel room. Unfortunately it was next to a church tower so we were woken up quite well by the church every morning. One day also saw a local marathon go past the hotel leading to unwelcome noise by the race commentators. A pity, but survivable. The breakfast buffet was nice and European style, a pleasant change from English breakfast buffets.

There was a payable shuttle service to the venue, reducing the 30 walking minutes to 5 relaxed minutes, fantastic after workshops and the parties. It was going every 30 minutes from your venue you would stay at. A single shuttle voucher for one direction was 2.50Euro regardless of the distance. A bit unfair if some hotels were 2 km or 10km away.

Registration and general organisation:

We registered on Thursday the 23rd around 20 o’clock local time just in time to join Dadinho’s workshop. Unfortunately by then it was already very full in the workshop room.

The registration went very smooth, they checked our names on their excel list and gave us our wristbands. During the workshops your own drinks and clothing were allowed into the dance venues but during the parties, no own drinks were

allowed into the whole venue and all the clothing and stuff had to be handed in to the cloakroom. As I found out later this would be quite a typical thing in the Netherlands or Belgium but it was a bit annoying to me, being used to the freedom we get in the UK. I find it hard remembering any place from my

previous 5 years of dancing in the UK where you were forced to hand your stuff in to the cloakroom. However some places in London do have that policy as well.While we are at the registration bit, the cloakroom charged 1Euro per item.

During the 5 days of congress I found it was pretty cold outside already. On 1 or 2 days it rained and occasionally it drizzled. Therefore most attendees certainly had to hand a lot of stuff in to the cloakroom during the parties causing potential queues. But on the plus side to the venue owners, they had a very well practised team that was used to handling situations like that. Consequently queuing times were kept to a minimum. However once my friend said it took him around half an hour to get his jacket after he left the party but there is always bound to be variations.

Thankfully you could always return to the cloakroom to get a new T-shirt out of your backpack and return it without extra charge. I thought that was at least a minimum act of kindness.

Getting drinks was a new concept I hadn’t see as such yet in a club but I think practically it made a lot of sense. In Studio 76 you exchange your money in the reception area for vouchers and then you take the vouchers into the dance room to pay at the bar. There was only one type of voucher and each of those

vouchers would cost 2.20Euro, which seemed quite a lot for the amount of liquid you would get in exchange. In reference to soft drinks 2.20Euro would get you a plastic cup of approximately 200ml. Over the course of the congress it caused a lot of frustration to attendees as it was very warm in the main room and the drink quantities were too small to lead to fair rehydration of your body during the party. Therefore a lot of people were forced to rehydrate on the toilet sinks.

Thankfully the toilet amenities, in my opinion were very decent and the water tasted very good.

On the first night, on Thursday, the men’s room even provided free deodorants.

But only on that night unfortunately.

Food:

The venue was in the middle of nowhere. There was a McDonald opposite but that’s it. First supermarket maybe 2-3km away. Therefore the organisers organised a food voucher system with which you could get a lunch and a dinner menu for each day from Thursday till Sunday at an indoor food station. I thought

that was a good idea but it would set you back another 90Euros. That was equal to almost 13Euros a meal. However I decided to go for it because I cannot stand Mcdonald’s food standards and I didn’t know how well the breakfast buffet would

have been in the hotels. In retrospect i think the food provided was really good, for lunch you could get a salad and a soup. For dinner you had 3 options for something bigger like a wrap or fish or pasta each with a salad. What wasn’t nice

was that the dinner options all came in warmed up in plastic boxes like the

microwave food from supermarkets. But when you are hungry after the lessons this was a very filling and healthy option. Plus you didn’t have to leave the venue for it. Sometimes the food could also have been hotter but at the end I did not regret it. No upset stomach after all.

Workshops:

Well with being the world’s biggest congress, the workshops were very crowded.

The teachers did allow for questions and as usual it was for everybody to decide on their own how much they would learn. There were 5 class rooms and none could cope with the amount of people attending. The teachers had microphones

and 3 rooms had elevated stages the other 2 were flat. So teachers stood in the middle and it needed patience to dance in such crowded atmosphere.

Room 3, 4, 5 were in a rented fitness center 1minute walk outsided from the main venue. They were all a lot smaller than the 2 big main rooms.

Unfortunately with still so many high profile teachers also teaching in these rooms, it lead to terrible crowdedness. Those rooms were also connected only through a single corridor and thereby when classes finished people the movement in the floor came almost to a halt because there were just so many

people there. In case of fire this place would have been an effective death trap.

Parties, Studio76 venue policies:

To enter the venue your bags were checked for own drinks and god knows what.

Every single person! That was efficient but annoying really. After 1 or 2am when you would leave the venue for a smoke or short trip to the nearby premium hotel you could not re-enter the venue anymore. Stupid! However if you had to

smoke they had a terrace on the 1st floor which you could use, so the smokers were happy.

Due to fire safety you were only allowed a tiny amount of things e.g. a hand bag or a shopping bag to the dance floor to store your cosmetics or towel whatever.

Parties, dancefloor, organisation, safety & queuing:

Again due to large size you should really be early at the venue. The earlier you came the more space you could take for 1-2 hours. Past 23 o’clock it would be pretty much packed. It emptied again around 3-4 o’clock.

There were two rooms (1 and 2) provided to the crowds. The 3 other workshop rooms (3,4,5) remained unused during the night as they were part of a rented fitness center. Due to large number of attendees that proved to be a bad decision making both floors terribly crowded. The 3 rooms could have also been used to play different music if with so many high profile Djs in the place.

Both rooms only had 1 entrance leading very often to terrible bottle neck situations where people took what felt ages to get in or out of a room. The 2nd room was 1 level above the first room and could only be accessed via high &

hard concrete stairs. The later the evening got the harder the stairs felt.

There was only 1 Dj set serving both rooms with the music all night. The walls between the rooms were too thin therefore no 2nd Dj set could have been used to play in the 2nd room. Dj’s changed every hour. I liked all of the music neo & Lambazouk were all well served mixed with dubstep and remixes. Strictly zouk only, no Samba de Gafiera, no Latin stuff.

Despite the large size of attendees I never felt I had to queue much, neither at the bar, at the toilets nor the cloak room.

The ladies definitely had to queue again at the female bathrooms. It never seems to go without it. And they also queued again to dance with their favourite teacher as on every congress so far.

They were several opportunities for pictures: In the reception area you could get a picture taken of you and your friends in front of the Dutch Zouk congress banner. Inside the dance room there were at least 4 or 5 professional photographers walking around and someone taking a video, of which I still don’t

know if it ever is going to be posted on youtube.

Parties, Shows:

With so many high profile teachers in the venue, we had the joy to see many shows. Due to little seating (maybe 20 wooden bench seats) space the audience had to stand during all the performances or sit on the floor. The organisers realised that and tried to cut the talking to a minimum and get on with the

dancing. Thursday till Sunday saw shows provided around midnight each time.

As much as I liked the shows it was clear that a lot of people came for the dancing, not for standing around and watch the pros perform. Tired eyes and stretching people were very visible.

Parties, “2much” performance:

The 2 guys were really cool to listen to live. As with most performers from their genre they hardly seem to fill more than 1 hours worth of time on stage. Therefore they were pretty quickly gone again. Still they were hardly any different from their songs on the internet. And hey some of the ladies even managed to get to dance a bit of Kizomba with the 2.

Party, Monday night:

On Monday the venue changed to Kerkplein in Breda. Here things were very different and more intimate. As the big crowd from the weekend would be gone the much smaller Kerkplein was chosen for the party and workshops.

Unfortunately both again were crowded but still more intimate as this time the teachers were on the same level with you. Not on an elevated, well ventilated stage far away. You could actually talk to some of them.

The 3 workshops in the evening were very crowded but still well improvised and the routines were developed so they could be connected. The music was again excellent but it became clearer that Djs replayed stuff from the previous nights.

The cloakrooms was actually free this time and I never saw ladies queuing outside the toilet.

My Ideas for improvement:

Put a limit to how many people can attend the congress. If it really was around 1000 each day. I would go down to maybe 600-700 max.

Thank you so much such a factual, comprehensive reviews I have ever read about zouk congress, most appreciated. I believe it would help for some zoukers to decide which congress they would attend. If anyone has different experience or opinion, please do not hesitate post to kazouk!!

#dutchzoukcongressreview2014