Events

NORTHEAST LADIES OF LINE ARTHRITIS FOUNDATION EVENT
JUNE 19TH & 20TH, 2009

The Northeast Ladies of Line was organized by Forty Arroyo of Massachusetts to spotlight instructors in the northeast area of the country who tirelessly encourage line dancing throughout their own areas. At the same time, these same ladies are asked to
support Forty’s chosen mission to help the Arthritis Foundation in Massachusetts with donations to help research and fight the diseases of arthritis. This is accomplished with the NELOL dance weekend event.
I have been honored to instruct at this event and this past weekend was our 5th anniversary. I have also been asked to become a staff member for future events and I am so happy and pleased to be a part of that.

Now on to the weekend. The venue was new this year. Usually we are at the Hayloft in Sturbridge, Mass. However, due to scheduling problems, Forty was able to book the LaSalle Reception Hall in Southbridge, Mass for the event. The venue was wonderful with a spacious, comfortable wooden dance floor, staging, seating and air conditioning.
This hall is next to the parish church of Notre Dame, which was a site to behold. The building was the size of a cathedral and the inside was just breathtaking. The deacon of the church was an experienced historian of the church and was more than happy to give a tour to anyone who asked. So that was absolutely a wonderful bonus for the attendees.

Our weekend started on Friday with registration opening at 4:30pm. Everything was well organized and efficient. The 8X10 dance booklets were filled with all of the dances that would be taught, bios of the instructors, sponsors and information about the foundation.
Instruction began at 6:30pm and continued each ½ hour. On Friday the instructors were:
Sarah Preston, who taught “Queen It Up” and “Jersey Boys Bop”. Bernadette Gill taught “Trickle, Trickle” and Forty taught “Mucara Walk”. Let me interject here that all of the levels of the dances were requested to be Beginner to Easy Intermediate.
Open dancing took place between lessons. Donna Shea was our DJ and she did a fantastic job making up the set sheets for the entire event. Every fourth dance was a request. Everyone was given a little paper to place their request on and it was place in a bag on Donna’s DJ table. Another great idea from Donna was to get a list of 10 current dances from each instructor that their group would like. It certainly made for a great two nights and day of dancing for all.
On Saturday, Rosie Multari warmed us up with Zumba. Then at 9:30am, Shirley McKittrick taught “Live It Down” and “Country As Can Be”. At 10:15am Nancy Rule taught “Boys Will Be Boys”. I was up next at 11am with Frank Trace’s “Making It”. At 11:45am Charlene Wiencek taught “What Every Way” and “West Coast Knot”.
We had a break for lunch until 1:45pm. That gave everyone a chance to go back to their hotel, have lunch in town(which was easy enough with a few restaurants available), or just relax at the venue.
At 1:45pm we had “turbo reviews” of all of the lesson from Friday and Saturday morning. At 2:45pm the lessons resumed with first up Donna Shea. She taught “Baby Gigolo” and “Eezee Boogie”. At 3:30pm Lynne Flanders taught “Heaven In My Woman’s Eyes”. Tina Foster taught at 4:15pm with “Mojo Rhythm” and last up before dinner was Millie Gagne, teaching “Protect Your Heart”.
A buffet dinner was included with the VIP weekend pass. We proceeded downstairs and was offered a delicious meal of baked ziti, barbeque chicken, wild rice, roasted veggies, salad and scrumptious desserts of brownies and giant cookies. Oh, don’t let me forget the fresh whipped cream for the brownies. Yumm!!
Open dancing started at 7:30pm and we also had one more lesson from Rosie Multari teaching “Lay It On The Line”.
Wonderful prizes were donated for the raffle along with free passes to most of the major weekend events. Forty works tirelessly to get hold of those passes which are so coveted by the attendees.
We surpassed our goal of last year bringing in over $4,000 plus. How great is that!
I hope you’ll consider attending next year’s event which will be on June 18-19th, 2010.
It’s a dancer friendly weekend for a good cause and also a chance to meet some pretty wonderful people from the northeast. Check out my picture gallery for photos of the event.

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