2026 edition

For my annual NZ trip, I went to shakedown this year. As events go its a small one. The NZ community is pretty lovely and its the easiest chance for Asia/Oceania dancers to experience Tara, Bameo and Connor. Given its a smaller event, it is harder for it to cater for all tastes; personally I love lots of social dancing and when an event is small and it wants to fit in a routine division, performances, comps, and workshops.... often its the social dance hours that suffer. :( The event effectively starts Friday evening with a little bit of social dancing (likely cut off by 1am by venue limitations), runs through Saturday day and night (until later on Saturda), and has workshops on Sunday. I got in to Otautahi (aka ChCh) early enough to go to the thursday night local dance, which was free to visitors. Dancefloor was pretty good. Good surface and good spacing when we pushed the chairs back. AC was a little weak first night (new venue, and its a theater so they hadn't catered for people dancing instead of sitting and watching) but feedback was shared and acted on. It felt noticeably better (cooler) the rest of the weekend, which I prefer. Bameo incredibly generously offered free passes to Swingtac for EVERYONE that attended. So we are planning on building a big canoe for next August ;) Its actually a pretty decent time of year to add great snow-sports as a side-adventure and otherwise explore the beautiful south island of NZ