WCSADS – President’s report

Kyle – President
Ken – treasurer
Donna – Secretary
Brian – director
Laurie – director
Celeste – director

The board hosts and runs these dances, and meets once a month to go over issues and keep the society moving forward.

Introduction:
West Coast Swing Addicts Dance Society is a not for profit society – formed for the love of the West Coast Swing dance, and wanting to have a place to dance, practice and socialize.

Overview of the last year:
Dances we put on since June 2023:
2023: Produced 19 regular dances

Major event: Myles and Tessa Beginner Night and Weekend Intensive
– Mid September – Very successful, 80 people, plus 2 nights of dancing –
– Thanks to Laurie for billeting, hosting private lessons, and to Kyle for communications, tickets and web support.

Events we sponsored this year:

• Calgary Dance Stampede – $800 – huge event this year, on par with many other regional WCS events
• Emma and Corey Styling event – very well attended – 50 people – Organized by Terra
  
  

Numbers:
84 members – signed up this year (June to now) –
Mailchimp: 370 subscribers
Meetup: 1654 members, Facebook 1400 members

Some impressions of the year:

We made the decision to do 2 regular dances a month in 2024, and the dancers have sustained that pretty well. We’ve kept up the attendance numbers, and some nights the floor gets very full.

It’s a substantial commitment from the event volunteers, who arrive early to set up, and for clean up at the end of the night. (any help with this is much appreciated)

We’ve thought about what would happen if we outgrew this hall – it would be hard to replace with a hall that has this kind of availability, location and price.

Some things we did this year for the dances:
– Bought new microphones – much better sound quality – thanks to Brian making that happen
– Airport seating, less tables to make it more social
– Bought more fans to help with the heat  

In general, the Addicts dances are the recruitment tool for WCS in Edmonton. People can bring a friend who has never danced, they can try it out, see how it works, and know it’s a place to go as they grow their dance. (Brian says his vision is that we have everyone in Edmonton come through our dance.)

The vision right now is that as dancers want to do more they’ll take lessons that are most helpful for them, at whatever skill level they are at.

Going forward into 2024/25:

We are a young society, just a few years old. We still need to improve our internal processes as we grow and get bigger.

Opportunities to do more events:

– If you want to run an event, come talk to us, we can find ways to support you, even as a private event.
– Running the dances is substantial – if you want to see more events, we’ll need some more people to help make this happen.

Thank You:

Thank you to all our instructor teams:
Ken, Kyle and Laurie, Eric and Rod, Rob and Sherry, Elise and Jan, Tracy and Dagen

Thanks to Brian and Melissa for sound and light set up.

Thanks to Ken and Donna for dealing with banking issues, auditing and society documents.

Thanks to Celeste for her help on the Instagram account.

Thanks to Megan for running the Meetup Group – bringing in new people

Thanks to the Bonnie Doon Community League for the favourable hall rental rates (which keeps the ticket price down), and to the Girl Guides who we pay an honorarium do our tickets.

And thank you to all the people who come out to the Addicts dances!