First and hopefully last

I put on my virtual event this last weekend, in the place of my usual four day event at a hotel by the airport. I had no idea what to expect - I didn’t even know if it would actually happen, which is one of the many reasons I didn’t charge a penny for it but urged donations instead, in the hopes of breaking even. To be fair, my fears of it not happening were not unfounded - just ten minutes before we shut down for the night opening night, YouTube pulled the entire livestream for copyright violation (read: music licensing issues). Thankfully my livestreamer has his own Twitch channel, so the next morning we seamlessly moved over there and had no issues the rest of the weekend (phew).

So much about this was so unknown - would we face criticism for passively encouraging people to get together and dance; would we not get any donations; would hardly anyone participate because online dance events are just too depressing; would the whole thing just be a sad, pathetic shadow of the real thing and remind us of how alone, and, indeed, fucked we all are? 

Well, I can’t speak for everyone’s experience of course, but only to mine and the many people who told me how they felt about it - it was really, really magical. Everything just came together and everyone was so full of excitement and fun - we need this, they said. At the last minute we decided to make our DJ evenings zoom parties so we could see everyone dancing in their homes; it absolutely made the weekend. People were able to chat and hang out, people dressed for the themes, one woman even danced alone in her house with a mannequin all weekend. We had a virtual pool party on Labor Day where everyone hung out in their yards in kiddie pools. There were lots of slip ups and technical glitches, but none of it mattered - I think in a weird way it added to the down-home-ness of it all. 

It was a weekend full of bizarre calamities - intense 113 degree temperatures on Sunday (105 the day before) that caused our power to go out and our AC to quit (until the BF went up into the attic and took the panels off so it could cool down - it worked!); one of our DJs lost power during his set, and when he went onto his dark porch to play a little guitar instead, there was a massive car accident right in front of his house and we had to get someone to fill in. All of this happened on air. It was nuts.

But we did it, and everything hit just the right note - I sang We’ll Meet Again for everyone at closing and people told me they sang along at home and cried (don’t think this isn’t going to be an annual tradition at our actual event closing from now on); our final DJ night turned into a musical videoclip session that I found fascinating and inspiring, people really dug the classes and panels I put together. 

As I said in my closing speech, I had been afraid of this event because I was afraid that it would hurt - that seeing everyone and seeing people dance and hearing the music after all this time would be unbearable; but it really wasn’t. It was actually great, and made me really optimistic for our future as a community. We’re not going anywhere. We’re just taking a forced break. We’ll be back.

I think by event’s end I had made enough to break even, and sold nearly 500 t shirts to boot. I’m happy with that. 

It’s the least stressed I’ve been during and after the event. But I still feel a bit like I’ve run a marathon. The BF kept the kids out of my hair all weekend...and it occurred to me that they can just come with us next year - they’ll be nine and seven and perfectly capable of hanging out in the ballroom. It’s time they see what a badass their mother is.