In 2016, 2 couples offered a nice event called “Las Perseidas”, a first and unique edition. In 2017, both couples came back with their personal events, Anna and Piotr revising the previous event with “Entre amigos” and Magda and Michal creating the “Sueno de Varsovia”. Here comes the famous question I heard several times “so, who is the winner ?”. And the winner is… me. Yes, me and the other dancers who got the chance to participate to both events and to get a double dose of polish marathons.

If you don’t know “Entre amigos”, you can check my previous comments on “Las perseidas”. The event was quite similar with new participants constituting a more close friends group. If you want to learn about “Sueno de Varsovia”, just continue to read this post and discover how from a seed in the mind of the organizers, we got a blooming flower before the summer ends.

Sometimes, we dance in palace or majestic buildings, sometimes in historic monuments, or it also happens we dance in forbidden places. With “Sueno de Varsovia” we didn’t dance in any kind of these settings. We danced in a romantic atmosphere entirely created from the organisators ideas by the creativity of  the “girl with flowers”, Izabela Kowalczyk. And I have to say, you can dance everywhere you want, it is nothing compared to a magical venue like this one. From scratch, the magic came mainly from the flowers all around the dancefloor. The whole room was a floral composition giving you the sadness of the sun disappearing while the autumn arrives, but also the hope that colors and glows will last a little bit more, until the end of your tanda.

Dancing in “Sueno” was the possibility to share your dreams and dance with them. After the registration, Magda collected the private wishes that will be projected anonymously on a wall all along the event. Until Sunday evening, I didn’t see mine. Until this moment, I was quite sceptical about the dream wall but also interested with all the serious, intimous or funny dreams. However, when my dream arrived at the same moment I was dancing with my Love, I understood the fabulous effect it can create. Today, I still wonder if there was someone hidden with instructions on each participants to select the best moment to put a dream on the wall or if it was just by chance. Let’s stay in a world of dreams and think there was a fairy somewhere.

Now, let’s be more practical and see if you’re getting your money’s worth. For this, I will let my guest “Cookie Monster” give her opinion on the event:

My first impression at the venue was a warm welcoming at the entrance, Magda and Michal were welcoming each single guest. They were calm, smiling and ready for their guests, like real hosts. That gives a very nice feeling, I felt like home.

Then the bracelet – the most original and extraodrinary souvenir ever. I wanted to take more than one, each of them had a different flower or a plant inside, all handmade, real masterpieces. It took me a while to choose my favourite.

Then the welcoming warming up drink, 4 or 5 different tastes to try, each one strong and delicious.

The venue. From an enormous space of the exhibition hall they made a cosy multipurpose space.

a wall from a glass covered with a curtain of fresh summer flowers, sunflowers,
colourful lights everywhere else,
comfortable spots with tables and chairs – to eat, talk, watch dancing couples,
a corner with food and drinks,
a darker corner with a DJ, dancers’ dreams and deckchairs with blankets to relax or to take a nap,
a good sound system and a nice dance floor…

This first impression stayed with me till the end of the marathon.

From a practical point of view:

with the food provided I didn’t have to leave the venue and I wasn’t hungry, there was enough food for everybody and it was very tasty!
coffee machine available for free to prepare a proper espresso – that doesn’t happen often at the marathons to get a good coffee included (congratulations for the genius idea),
a glass of a good wine (red and white) served during the night time (grateful for this idea also),
it was clean, everything was in order, in a very elegant way, I felt well served,
there was a big cloakroom and a place to change shoes,
the toilets were very well-equipped, you could find there everything that you could have imagined to be necessary during marathon, even a hairdryer which was a multipurpose tool 😉

Back to the initial review.

From the dance point of view, “Sueno” could get the award of the best navigation of the year 2017. I remember just one soft contact with a dancer which finished with a respectful salutation. The good navigation is maybe related to the good level of dance or the space offered (but space can also creates chaos). The dance floor was big enough to give space to everyone and you could notice lines on the floor. You can think “it is to help leaders with the ronda” but the lines were just the bonds between the parts of the built floor. A nice floor by the way. There was the classical downtime during the event (before/after dinner) and some tables could be difficult to approach for the newcomers in an event with a good mix of countries but where East countries took an important place (Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Baltic…). On this last comment, it is maybe my personal feeling as I recognized more people from  the East.

The DJ selection proposed several of my favorites DJ with differences of identities for a nice cocktail. To complain, I could say it was a selection with no risk taking. Nice set so from Alexandra Kotelnitskaya, Ewa Zbrzeska, Ines Tabajara and Olga Agapova. I stayed during the sets of Jenni Valli and Daniel Rossi who got the evenings but as I really like their completely different styles, it was a must. Too bad few dancers stayed at this time and preferred to go to rest.

For the afterparty beginning on midnight, I was surprised so many participants came back for Marcin Blazejewski (great music also). But a lot of people planned to leave the city on Monday and not at the end of Sunday as it happens most of the time. “Sueno de Varsovia” is a marathon which offer you the possibility to have good moments from the beginning until the end.

Thank you Tatyana (Matveyeva) for sharing your pictures and the atmosphere of the event.