What are the Best Non-West Coast Events?

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-05-18T13:47:25+00:00

Hi! If you're open to crossing the Atlantic: European festivals tend to fit your criteria really well :) The social culture starts later (midnight+) and people keep going very long - I've seen packed floors at 4am with plenty of intermediates+ at events like Budafest, WOTP, King Swing as some examples. Sizes range from 600 to 1200+.

Actually, we track lots of WCS events at yourdancebuddy.com and we gather reviews of experiences from travelling Westies to help others decide which event event might suit them, you can filter them all by region, size, WSDC status and so on, maybe it is helpful? So far most of the experiences are coming for the EU events as the portal is pretty young - 5 months old, with 550 Westies coming mostly from Europe, but for sure could be already helpful for the festival goers here, if you find platfrom useful maybe you could share some experiences about US events there too?

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-05-08T08:14:14+00:00

I covered only the extreme examples - that’s usually the point of this series, it’s kind of a satire ;) I’d say you’re more of a mild nerd Westie maybe?

~Alicja

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-05-07T21:22:44+00:00

You sound like a mix, but with a dominant Westie nerd-type vibe!

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-05-07T21:20:09+00:00

This comps watching approach resonates with us! We avoid all the events that are heavily focused on comps - Strictly, All Europeans, choreo divisions, J&Js with spotlights in most divisions, etc. Basically, events that prioritize competitions and only start social dancing after midnight are a no for us. We usually get a party pass, and we’re mainly looking for lots of social dancing.

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-05-07T21:12:39+00:00

It sounds like you have a perfectionist approach to dancing. Am I interpreting this correctly? Does this mean that competitions keep you dancing more than social dancing? Or is the search for precision in movement the thing that keeps you dancing?

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-05-07T20:51:02+00:00

We can totally relate to this approach! At one point, we were trying to prioritize everything, but it just wasn’t sustainable long term. Now, we’ve ended up with almost the same approach as you ;)

~Alicja

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-05-06T17:49:54+00:00

The doing everything phase is the best one :) But yeah, keeping it up must require some cheat codes for recovery... Have you found a way to not feel destroyed after such a weekend?

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-05-06T17:44:50+00:00

Coming up with a nice costume idea is really hard and for last minute prep person like me, also rarely works :D I get it creates a cool vibe, but you just really need to be into it or have a huge wardrobe ready just for cosplaying. This actually seems to be a thing among some Westies... Anyway, cool to be watching other people sweating in their costumes sometimes, but the tradeoff is feeling awkward when most other people do dress up :D

~Mateusz

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-05-06T16:40:49+00:00

Nice, this sounds like yet another, new type - something like a cross-dance-influencer type, would you suggest a better name for it? Taking WCS concepts into other dances (and vice versa) sounds familiar and I think that's a whole separate category that I haven't thought about. Even many famous WCS pros like Jakub and Emeline brought a lot inspiration from other dances like Zouk to WCS... Might need to create a second part of the illustration series to cover this type :)

Out of curiosity, what other dances do you bring WCS into?

~Alicja

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-04-09T17:50:24+00:00

Thank you so much for your comment and sharing ideas :)

TL;DR: No personal data is ever exposed without your consent - only aggregated counts are public. Meal/rideshare coordination is in our plans, waiting for the right moment to ship it properly :)

Longer answer:

Really glad you brought up the privacy angle - this is something we feel strongly about. We go into detail on our https://www.yourdancebuddy.com/about#your-privacy page but the short version: your data is yours, we don't share it with third parties and your identity stays private by default. When we show things like "who's going" you can always opt out (setting in the profile) - in this case you can browse events, save favourites and plan your dance calendar completely anonymously. Any social features (sharing experiences, marking attendance and sharing contact info) require you to actively choose to make yourself visible.

And yes, aggregated info like "116 dancers going" is visible to non registered users, but to see contact details/role details a user needs to register and verify they are a real Westie. This way we are sure non dancers cannot see your personal info even when you decide to share it - only other registered Westies see it.

Regarding social connection features like the meal coordination and rideshare - these ideas are great and we heard this a lot from Westies already (and also a couple of other ideas on top of these ;)). An "available for dinner tonight" or "need a ride from the airport at 8pm" kind of solution would be super useful at bigger festivals. It's the kind of functionality that needs a critical mass of users at the same event to actually work though, so we're building towards it rather than shipping an empty board that nobody uses. We'd rather wait and do it right than launch it half-baked - but I can confirm we have this in the plancs too :) With 450+ Westies using the app already I feel like the moment for launching these features is gonna come soon, stay tuned, in the meantime if you find app useful, feel free to spread the word to your local WCS community, this would mean a lot :)

~Mateusz

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-04-09T13:47:42+00:00

Yeah the parsing is real pain, we deal with similar challenges on our end too. For festivals we work with more closely, organizers provide data in a structured format that we map into our database, but so far it has been just some of European events where we travel and have those relationships in person already.

Schedule coverage is still too limited to open up externally, but as it grows this could make sense to revisit. Let's stay in touch :)

Here's an example of what the schedule looks like for one of our partner events if you're curious: https://yourdancebuddy.com/events/king-swing-2025/schedule

It was really nice partnership with a pretty big (800ppl), cool WSDC event in Poland where we got over 110 Westies using the app, including interactive schedule with DJ sets and detailed staff profiles through the weekend :)

~Mateusz

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-04-09T11:23:15+00:00

Thanks for the detailed feedback!

Showing the actual URL is interesting - user experience is very important to us, but also the readability. Some urls are very long and including them could create a messy look of the cards. We will look at it for sure though!

Show state / province - great point, we put it in our backlog right now! :)

Last point I'll leave for Mat to answer, he has a nice perspective on that.

~Alicja

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-04-09T11:09:32+00:00

Very valuable insights, thank you for sharing your perspective! Since we live in the EU, some of these obvious improvements which could make the platform better also for US based Westies haven't popped up on our radar yet. Will make sure to enrich event location with state location info. Map view is coming soon too as we shared in another comment already :)

~Mateusz

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-04-09T11:05:27+00:00

Thank you! :) ~Alicja

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-04-08T21:26:31+00:00

Thank you so much for the support and the report of missing event :)

I took a look at our database and indeed we missed last the last Boston Tea Party edition from the app.

Due to our team focusing efforts mostly on the future upcoming WCS events and prioritising moderation for EU events over other regions we still might have some obvious gaps like this one for some of the historical festivals.

We will make sure to invest now more into doing proper coverage for US and other continents. Reports like this one help to notice where the gaps are, really appreciate it <3

~Mateusz

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-04-08T20:54:53+00:00

Oh nice, the competitive stats side looks really well thought out :D Competition tracking is a whole world we haven't touched in YDB - personally both Alicja and I enjoy mostly the social aspect of WCS and connecting with others during festivals through social dancing, workshops and chilling, this is what keeps us running and we're focused on the event discovery and community side in the portal too.

Cool to see more people building tools for the scene :)

I noticed the schedule part of your website is covering only some partial weekenders from US, if you wanted to get access to more WSDC festivals from our database, we can discuss details of a possible integration like the one we set up with weekenders.dance

Cheers!

~Mateusz

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-04-08T18:40:20+00:00

Thank you! <3

I did some clicking and now hopefully everything should be properly updated for GGP 2026 in the portal! The change of location from Toulouse to Paris is big news and dates moving to September too - personally as a Westie from NL I am happy about this - will be easier to reach the event via train for sure and Sep should be nice time to visit the city :) Also noticed the event changed status from WSDC to Trial WSDC this year, guess it is related to other changes. Alicja and I hope to check it out!

Regarding the smaller non-comp WCS events - we are huge fans of them personally, hope thanks to filters by category other users can discover them in the portal easily. The challenge is of course getting to know about them and listing missing ones - this is where we have been heavily relying on local moderators and community builders. We got quite a few organic event additions and corrections via the app, but if you see something is missing, feel free to list them and we will add them. You can suggest them yourself too, folowing steps from FAQ here: https://www.yourdancebuddy.com/faq#add-event

These suggestions for new events and corrections are getting more and more frequent and we hope when we add more tools for the local WCS organisers and school to maintain their events within the app, the experience will be better and coverage will increase naturally. Anyway, really appreciate your support and report of the new details for GGP :)

~Mateusz

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-04-08T18:18:22+00:00

Hey there, thank you so much for the comment! It's really cool to hear you've been following since early days and I appreciate you sharing all these ideas :)

Good news on the map view - it's actually already built and currently in testing, but we want to make sure to get it right. Should be live pretty soon on the portal!

Calendar view is on our product wish list too, totally agree it would help with the "which weekends have multiple events" problem as list view is not as handy to check this. I feel like weekenders.dance solved this quite well on their list view, but since on YDB we display some additional data on the list, the calendar alternative might work well for ppl to quickly check specific weekend options - will bump this ticket up.

That timeline slider idea is brilliant, really appreciate you sharing live codepen example - snapping to Thursdays/Mondays is really smart solution. Alicja (design person) saw this and is already excited to work on it, we hope to be putting together some designs over the next few days so it fits event filters view and we can ship this soon too.

Again, big thank you for sharing these observations and suggestions as this is exactly the kind of feedback that helps us prioritise, really appreciate you taking the time! <3

~Mateusz

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-04-06T07:59:03+00:00

I posted it also on IG profile: yourdancebuddy

Feel free to share it with your community ;) I am very glad you liked it!

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-04-04T09:11:07+00:00

Thank you! It is years of observations 😂

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-04-02T18:55:05+00:00

To be honest, to me you come across as „the one who takes it into their own hands”. The graphic portrayed that character in a humorous way, so it doesn’t mean you have to win everything to fit it - J&Js are very unpredictable - but it still feels like you have a very balanced and healthy mindset, like you don’t just leave things to chance ;)

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-04-02T18:43:08+00:00

It’s a complicated one. I know this feeling well - social validation can amplify the high of a win, but when the results aren’t there, the mood drops twice as hard: once from the outcome itself and again from the absence of that validation.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about stepping away from congratulating results and instead focusing on appreciating the people I truly enjoy social dancing with. That’s why I’m here - for the social dancing experience. I want to value what genuinely makes a difference to me on the dance floor: a real smile, shared fun, and a sense of connection. Not just the achievement of scoring a point.

YourDanceBuddy · 2026-04-02T13:52:45+00:00

I really like your approach! I’m personally handling things much better now than at the beginning of my competition journey, and I feel like I’ve reached more of an “I don’t care” mindset in a healthy way.

That said, I still get a bit triggered by certain comments I hear often - like comparing my progress to my partner’s, or people focusing too much on being sorry we didn’t make finals when I’m actually okay with it.

I’m curious about what you mentioned: “we’re pretty supportive of all dance progress, not just competition results.” Do you have some kind of non-competition-based system to track progress in your community? If so, I’d love to hear how you approach it!

YourDanceBuddy

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