Rollin’ On The River 2007
The 11th annual “Rollin On The River” (ROTR) dance was held over the 2007 Labor Day weekend in St. Louis. The West County Swing Dance Club sponsored the event and Terry James and Barb Vierdag were the coordinators. Dancers from seventeen states and thirty different clubs filled the dance floor for four days of dancing.
In all, five hundred people from all over the Mid West and from as far away as New Jersey, Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California attended this years’ ROTR. For those of you who have never attended a weekend dance event like ROTR, it is, simply put, like a family reunion where we get to see and visit with our “cousins” from the other cities. After you truly get involved with swing dancing you’ll find that the swing dance community is a family.
Thursday night was the ROTR kick off dance at the Concord farmers Club. Concord is where WCSDC dances every Tuesday night of the year. The normal Tuesday night attendance is about 300 dancers, but for kick off night we had over 400 in attendance.
Friday started early with dance workshops at 9:00 AM. About 100 people attended the various Friday workshops where we taught the River Waltz, Swamp Thing, Tush Push, and Stationary Cha Cha. St. Louis Imperial swing dancing was also taught for anyone who wanted the basics of how we predominately dance in St. Louis.
Friday night was club shirt night and we all wore our shirts to show off our local dance club affiliation. We had workshops Saturday & Sunday mornings and afternoons as well as open dancing each afternoon
Many of the dancers used the afternoon times to visit and explore the many attractions St. Louis has to offer. The St. Louis Arch, the free admission St. Louis Zoo, Anheuser Bush Brewery, Grant’s Farm, the Botanical Gardens, and many other wonderful places to see..
Rollin’ on the River is one of just two events sponsored by the ABA. We in St Louis are proud to have the current ABA president, Mr. Gary Chaney, reside here. Gary introduced all of the ABA Hall of Fame members that attended ROTR and announced that the new inductees would be introduced in Cincinnati in November.
We had a large crowd of attendees from the Chicago area. Over seventy-five dancers came to St. Louis from Chicago and surrounding suburbs. Boy, do those Chicago people make a lot of noise. They also like to have a good time and we sure enjoy having them. Mike and Debbie Lapina treated all the attendees to a terrific dance demo on Saturday night.
Sunday night was the big dress up night with our Mexican Fiesta theme. We started off Sunday evening with a sit down dinner that was included in the ticket price. We served 500 dinners, so just about everyone stayed for the last evening of dancing. There was a best-dressed contest, a special Salsa demo by some local St. Louis dancers, and we gave away dozens of attendance prizes including four $100 dollar bills. The 50/50 drawing was $860 dollars. Then we really surprised everyone by giving out the other half of the 50/50, another $860 dollars. And wouldn’t you know it, someone from Chicago got the second half money. She was very happy.
We think ROTR is a great event and gets better each year. If you haven’t been to St. Louis, plan on joining us in 2008 over Labor Day weekend. If you have been here, we sure hope you come back again.
