Esencia Nights

The only thing that made this festival good was other dancers. Apart that, the festival organisation was terrible and it felt that the main goal of the organisers was just to get us much money as possible. Probably the most important thing was that organisers didn't allow people to bring water in, even if there were huge discussions and people were begging for it. The security was more keen on to check if people are not bringing water (doing full body scan, tapping people to see if they don't have bottles hidden somewhere on their body) than checking for bracelets (my two friends actually went without the bracelets in cause security didn't check that). The venue was very hot, the sound system pretty bad, in one end of the room the music was extremely loud and in another it seemed there were no speakers and the sound of music was very low. Workshops timetable was a bit messed up - it was very unclear where some workshops are supposed to be, cause in timetable it was written one room, but then organisers change something and do not inform people, no announcements in any of the channels regarding the changes. J&J organisation was the worst I have probably seen in any event. The extreme huge number of participants (amateur group was like 200 people, pro around 80) and not enough time. Amateur JJ was two hours late, they didn't finish everything in one day and asked people to come on Sunday. For both groups in every round you dance like 4 min and that's all. If you don't pass to next round, your whole JJ was only those 4min where judges don't even have time to look at you. If you pass to the finals (in pro category there were 3 rounds) it means that in total you danced 12min in whole few hours of JJ. In the finals you got only one partner and you didn't change, no dancing with other finalists, no dancing with judges as well. So the final conclusion, the event was very well marketed and seemed very hyped up, but I'm definitely not coming back to this one again.

The venue is amazing. I really love the dance facilities at this hotel — the space is spacious enough, and the arrangement for competitions and social dances is perfectly well-organized.
There are also so many world-class instructors and skilled dancers here. My only small feedback is that the music was a bit too repetitive. Hopefully the DJ can prepare a more diverse music selection for the next edition.
Besides, too many dancers gather around the DJ booth, making it hard to walk around and easy to bump into others while dancing. Meanwhile, there’s plenty of empty space at the back of the dance floor, so it would be great to optimize crowd flow and layout next time.
Overall, I’m very satisfied with the entire event.

Unfortunately, there are a few things that could be improved:
- Punctuality at workshops: Some workshops started late, whilst others began on time. This made it difficult to move between rooms.
- Workshop rooms: Last-minute changes of rooms were not communicated clearly enough.
- Language used in workshops: Some artists spoke only in Spanish. This excluded international dancers.
- Music at parties: Some dancers would have liked to have slower songs, particularly towards the end of the party.
- J&J Amateurs: What was discussed in the masterclass could have been communicated by email or, for example, held during the lunch break. As it was, we had to miss out on a great workshop for the so-called masterclass. The start numbers could have been checked during the masterclass or when the numbers were handed out. A three-hour delay and having to dance without warming up is really not nice. During the delay, one could have attended workshops, for example, or at least had a social instead of just waiting.
- Day social: I think, often people didn't know that it was already going on. Since they saw from their hotel rooms, that nobody was there, they didn't come. When people started dancing, more and more people came.