Balboa Castle Camp

03/11/2020

Happy birthday to castle constant Sanna Leinonen!️ There from the start, there to the end. ❤️🏆✨

Balboa Castle Camp 2017 - Photo Credit: For Dancers Only (http://d.pr/1fEEY) - http://www.ebobrie.com/balboa-castle-camp-2017

16/04/2020

We have no words for this amazing snap. What were your favourites?

Balboa Castle Camp 2019: https://balboacastlecamp.de/ - Photo: www.fb.me/photosForDancersOnly - http://www.ebobrie.com/balboa-castle-camp-2019

30/10/2019

Eric sees everything.

30/10/2019

A lovely photo of our guardian angels at the castle, Ghiza & Carmen (front left), managers of the castle's maintenance crew, who provided us with so much help and support over the years. ❤️

Photo: Eugenia Sarapina

29/10/2019

Castle Camp is on fire! Featuring Atilio and Dagmar. Video by Adam (accidentally). --watch with the sound on

28/10/2019

Balboa Castle Camp 2019: https://balboacastlecamp.de/ - Photo: www.fb.me/photosForDancersOnly - http://www.ebobrie.com/balboa-castle-camp-2019

Link here: https://balboacastlecamp.de/highlights/2019-photos-by-eric-bobrie/

28/10/2019

We only had one competition in 2019 - a Mix & Match & Switch competition. Everybody led, everybody followed. Here is the (looooong) final.

Video: Atilio Menendez

You can watch all the 2019 videos here: https://balboacastlecamp.de/highlights/videos/

This is "BCC 2019 Mix & Match & Switch Competition - Finals" by Castle Camp on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

27/10/2019

Missing the castle? Us too. Get ready for a memories blitz this week! Let’s start with this:

Video by Atilio

https://vimeo.com/365934861

Music: Hot Sugar Band

11/10/2019

WOW … Now *that* was quite a wrap-up for Balboa Castle Camp!

Thank you to each and every person who joined us this year. Especially to the participants. We have the feeling that this final edition was full of positive, good and buoyant vibes, kindness and generosity. This wouldn't have been possible without all of you. It really feels like family. Thank you all for that. It’s proof that the castle is dead but balboa is not!

We also want to thank:
* the creative geniuses and shapers of the whole Castle Camp concept from the early years, including Tycho Gallinaccio, Sanna Leinonen and especially Anna Porzelt.
* dear Caro Balboa, who attended *every* single Castle Camp – both the Balboa and the Swing editions – ever, and Sanna, who attended every single Balboa edition.
* our dedicated Night Manager Tess Fraunández, Day Manager Kate Davison, and the Volunteer Team who worked around the clock to ensure that the party went on (and that you got coffee, drinks, glasses to drink them in, classrooms and spaces, screenprinting, news and information, and a welcoming atmosphere for all of that). Their names this year were: Marie, Alexandra, Camille (Jofe), Ermira, Chott, Chardia, Rebecca, Andrea, Claire, Fannie, Astera, Elke, Claudine, Sean, Marike, Eckart and Heike (and Leonie, who was sadly struck down with a cold just before the event but still helped out!). Thanks also to our evening program coordinator Rory Leahy and all those who participated in an evening panel discussion or assisted us setting up the Castle Kino for Strictly Ballroom! Huge kisses also to all the dancers who jumped in to help out at lunch and dinner

01/10/2019

Exquisite video by Atilio.

This is "Last Year in Beesenstedt" by Castle Camp on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

26/09/2019

Musical friends: who has a double bass + guitar amp we can borrow for the live bands from Friday to Tuesday (4-8 October)? Please get in touch! We will pay for them of course!

12/09/2019

Our wonderful friend Atilio has made a video of impressions from last year's motto party. The theme was "kid's birthday party" to celebrate 7 years of Balboa Castle Camp in 2018. Check it out here: https://vimeo.com/358516486

Impressions of 2018's quite crazy motto party... a children's birthday! Filming & Editing by Atilio Menéndez

06/09/2019

👐🏾👊🏽💪🏽✋🏿🤛🏾 Our castle masseur Sam Dobbie will be back providing massages again this year to ward off your aches and pains and keep those balboa muscles in tip top condition so you can dance all night long. 👐🏾👊🏽💪🏽✋🏿🤛🏾

06/09/2019

31/08/2019

In case you missed it, here’s a link to the latest newsletter, published yesterday:

https://us10.campaign-archive.com/?u=4a9aa632f89ec5818f255e156&id=cfb238f983

Not yet subscribed? Sign up on the website to receive camp updates via email 💌

Here are some updates! DJ Mosquito Hopkins On Sunday 6 October, for ONE night only, Sir Mosquito will be playing from shellac only, all night, in the ballroom, for your dancing pleasure. As we said last year, his shellac selection, his equalizers and his rhythmical and stylistic aplomb make this nig...

27/08/2019

Feel like a ghost in your current outfit? Need some (new) clothes? At the castle, ghosts are welcome, and dancing in a towel is fine, but you might also find some lovely new garments at Marijke and Caro's Vintage Market! 👀 :) Bring some cash and/or vintage clothes, shoes and accessories to swap or sell 👉🏿 Contact Marijke & Caro for more info.

16/08/2019

ANNOUNCING: Evening BIPHOP class and BASEMENT HIPHOP PARTY!

As you know, at the castle we are allergic to anything boring and conventional. Luckily we will have extra strong protection against that! Assisted by Kira, Tycho (the founder of Balboa Castle Camp) will be returning to offer evening classes in BIPHOP over the weekend and a HIPHOP basement party on Saturday.

**Partner Dance to Hiphop with modified Bal Technique**
Friday: Biphop Part 1
Saturday: Biphop Part 2
Part 1 and Part 2 will have different content so they can be taken both or independently from each other.

And you'll get a chance to try it out on the ...underground... social dance floor at the hiphop party Tycho will run in the basement.

07/08/2019

🔥 Single follows 🔥

We have 🖐🏾 5 places left for you* in the week-long standard balboa track...

👉🏽 https://balboacastlecamp.de/register/

*reminder: gender is not important!

06/08/2019

UPDATE: It’s fixed! But you can still enjoy the robots 🙂

ORIGINAL POST:
Our email, registration and payment confirmation system is momentarily down! We know about the problem and are working to fix it. 🤖🔧❤️

Meanwhile, here are some robots doing triple steps...

https://media.giphy.com/media/nSV1X5tzFnUc0/giphy.gif

30/07/2019

Hey LEADS! Please help some of our follows get off the waiting list for the *weekend* standard balboa track (all levels)! We currently have space for 4 single follows for the full week - until more leads sign up! Register now! Get your friends to register!

https://balboacastlecamp.de/

Pic: Eric Bobrie

24/07/2019

Announcing LIVE BAND #2: Hot Sugar Band (Paris)!!!!

Yaasssss balboa queens! This high-energy group of swingin' Parisians will start off our live music for the week, playing TWO nights for us over the weekend! (But we also recommend staying for Professor Cunningham...)

Here's a link to the band's homepage:
https://www.hotsugarband.fr/the-band

And here's the newly added Live Music page on the BCC website: https://balboacastlecamp.de/night-day/live-music/

Pic: Hot Sugar Band website

21/07/2019

What’s that?! You want more ELEF? On the weekend? Ok! 👌🏾 We have now opened up the weekend option for the ELEF track 🙂 You’re welcome. You know what to do 👉🏽 https://balboacastlecamp.de/register/

18/07/2019

We have received reports that some people have misunderstood the Motto Party theme - they think it means boring old-fashioned ballroom dancing, or something???? 🤮 NO!

Here’s the announcement again - read the description! “...a kitschy, glittery ballroom extravaganza. [...] camp, glam overthetop bling [...] bedazzled ... Who wants to run a fake-tan salon?!?!?”

THIS PARTY WILL BE ANYTHING *BUT* BEIGE!

It's supposed to be Scott's winning moment, but when he and Liz get boxed into a corner, he's forced to dance way out of line. In this scene: Shirley Hasting...

16/07/2019

BIG NEWS: 2019 will be the *LAST* Balboa Castle Camp

We are sad to announce that 2019 will be the last Balboa Castle Camp. The reasons are purely practical: the members of the core organising team have numerous life commitments and priorities that make putting together such a unique camp at such a high standard (and at this price) increasingly difficult.

We therefore want to go out with as BIG of a BANG as possible and want *everyone* to come celebrate this magical place.

If you’ve never been, and you’ve been thinking ‘I’ll get around to it one of these years’, this is the year! Put in your leave applications, book your flights, register and get ready for a wild week of wonder. If you’re one of those excellent people who return year after year and see yourself as part of the castle family, then please come celebrate, commiserate and cry and laugh tears of sadness and joy with us in one final bacchanal hurrah.

We have had a lot of crazy moments over the past 8 years. Hearts have been filled and broken. Friendships have been created and strengthened. We’ve behaved like kids and partied like there’s no tomorrow, but this time there really is no tomorrow… all good things must come to an end so let’s end on a high together!

Love from Malte, Ulrike, Kate & Anna T.

Here's a link to the announcement on the website (and don't forget to click on 'Register' next!): https://balboacastlecamp.de/news/

And here are some farewell messages – castles, ballrooms, Patrick Swayze… sigh… Love will always be in the air when we remember the good times ❤️ The End. ❤️

The Sound of Music - So Long, Farewell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D6xSDffm6c

Dirty Dancing - Time of my Life (Final Dance)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpmILPAcRQo

Strictly Ballroom: Love Is In The Air... (Final Dance)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtYdcZmpRyM

12/07/2019

The theme of the motto party this year will be *Strictly Ballroom*

Pull out your feather dresses, tuxedos, sequins & diamontes! Bleach those teeth and stiffen those smiles, throw peroxide on that hair and spray on your fake tan! It’s time for a kitschy, glittery ballroom extravaganza.

It’s the film that launched Baz Luhrmann’s career as a master-purveyor of camp, glam overthetop bling, combined with deeply humanist, tragicomic narratives celebrating all dorks, freaks and stigmatized folks just trying to live their best bedazzled life on the dance floor!

Here's one of our favourite clips - the famous 'Samba sacrilege' scene, in which the dance-teacher mother of the renegade/outcast main character wonders where-on-earth her championship-winning son got his outlandish genre-breaking ideas from... (woah, that was a lot of hyphens...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeNbzZ2uD60

Check out the new updated tab on our website for some more pics: https://balboacastlecamp.de/night-day/motto-party/

Who wants to run a fake-tan salon?!?!?

It's supposed to be Scott's winning moment, but when he and Liz get boxed into a corner, he's forced to dance way out of line. In this scene: Shirley Hasting...

12/07/2019

**Weekend Passes**

Weekend Pass registration is now open! The pass is for three nights (arriving Thursday at the start of the camp and departing Sunday afternoon).

And rather than crying into your pillow at the thought of leaving us on Sunday, ask us about staying extra nights when you check in. Of course, we think you should just stay the whole week... especially for the Strictly Ballroom motto party... 💅🏽 🤷🏽‍♀️

More info here: https://balboacastlecamp.de/general-info/costs/

Pics: Eric Bobrie, 2018.

08/07/2019

We can only echo Sanna: “YAZZZZ!

Balboa Castle Camp 2019 is going for Strictly Ballroom for the theme party!!!

Get ready for fake tan, hairspray, sequins, over the top *everything* 😀 😀 😀

You don't want to miss this year! Some spots still left 😉 “

09/06/2019

INTRODUCING your teachers! Who are those people who will be spending twenty hours with you in the classroom and even more at the parties? We asked them to tell us their most memorable moments from previous years.

MICKEY recalled a radical dance intervention with Kelly, and a few epic basement parties:

"One of my favorite memories at Balboa Castle Camp was when Kelly and I performed a last minute choreography to Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Take the Power Back’. Castle Camp is one of those special places where people can really get behind out of the box ideas and I’ve always felt the atmosphere breeds a lack of judgment which is so incredibly rare and necessary in the Bal scene. A month later after the video had circulated [https://youtu.be/PU2-wND2xB0] we heard whispers that we were trying to ‘westify’ balboa and got a kick out of how crazy people can get when you decide to do something different, even when it’s just for fun. But that is why BCC has always been one of my absolute favorite events. You can let loose. Balboa Castle Camp has an incredibly unique energy that drives it. You add that to the friends I’ve made , the stories that have unfolded and incredible late night basement parties and there are few places to compare it with :) "

Pic: Eric Bobrie; on Mickey's birthday.

01/06/2019

INTRODUCING your teachers! Who are those people who will be spending twenty hours with you in the classroom and even more at the parties? We asked them to tell us their most memorable moments from previous years.

MASHA told us a beautiful story about s*xual freedom, friendship and solidarity:

“It was in 2017, I was on the B floor talking with a male friend about this and that, eventually steering our conversation towards personal life. He asked me if there's anyone in the room that I liked, and I pointed out a guy. My friend asked if the guy felt the same way about me, I confirmed that he did, and moreover, we've already stolen a good number of kisses from each other. My friend was happy for me and, us being close enough friends to discuss all aspects of our life, he inquired if me and that guy managed to have s*x yet. Which we hadn't. ‘What's keeping you?!!!’ - he cried. I was mumbling smth inconclusive about not having a place secluded enough from the crowds... ‘Oh, nonsense! Wait, I think I understand what the problem really is. You stay here, I'll be right back!’ - he told me. And came back with a condom. ‘Now go and be happy’, he said. Because my friends are the best, and most of them come to BCC 😊 (PS: I still have that condom, cause the happiness eventually happened after BCC already and we were properly equipped ourselves).”

This is a great opportunity to inform you of our new Safety page on the website:
https://balboacastlecamp.de/general-info/safety/

There you can find our Code of Conduct, which applies to everyone who enters the castle, and some tips on how to practice consent ON and OFF the dance floor! Be excellent to yourselves and others 😘

Pic: Masha in the middle; by Eric Bobrie.

28/05/2019

INTRODUCING your teachers! Who are those people who will be spending twenty hours with you in the classroom and even more at the parties? We asked them to tell us their most memorable moments from previous years.

VALERIE remembers her first night ...and all the other nights... “You know how the last night of a camp everyone is really in a groove and the party is so much fun that it lasts until the morning? I was shocked to find that this happened on my very first night of the Balboa Castle Camp. I thought to myself, "Wow, what an unbelievable way to start things off!" I have never ever danced until 6 AM at the beginning of an event before. Little did I know that this would happen every single night.”
🍸🔥💅🏽

Pics: Valerie at the castle; various credits, incl. Eric Bobrie

27/05/2019

This is how excited Professor (Adrian) Cunningham is about returning to Balboa Castle Camp 2019 where he and his Old School band will play three nights of excellent music for you 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

For more about Professor Cunningham and his Old School: https://www.professorcunninghamjazz.com/

Pic: Kate Davison, snapped at Minor Swing in Gothenburg on the weekend with some BCC regulars and fellow musicians 🥳

21/05/2019

INTRODUCING your teachers! Who are those people who will be spending twenty hours with you in the classroom and even more at the parties? We asked them to tell us their most memorable moments from previous years.

Here’s what INES said: “I really enjoy dressing up in different ways and manners and I love the motto parties most and consider them highlight of the whole experience. The reason I started going to BCC was the vintage market I initated there and which still happens at the camp.”

We love these things too, Ines! ❤️ So excited to have you on the teaching team!

14/05/2019

BCC 2016 - Anna Has It Her Way

INTRODUCING your teachers! Who are those people who will be spending twenty hours with you in the classroom and even more at the parties? We asked them to tell us their most memorable moments from previous years.

ANNA wanted to have it her way... 😍 (we like her way)

This is "BCC 2016 - Anna Has It Her Way" by Castle Camp on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

10/05/2019

INTRODUCING your teachers! Who are those people who will be spending twenty hours with you in the classroom and even more at the parties? We asked them to tell us their most memorable moments from previous years.

SANNA and ADAM decided to say nothing at all: "A picture is worth a thousand words. 6 pictures 6 thousand words, right?"

Collage compiled by Sanna & Adam.

08/05/2019

INTRODUCING your teachers! Who are those people who will be spending twenty hours with you in the classroom and even more at the parties? We asked them to tell us their most memorable moments from previous years. Here’s what MEL & JO said:

Mel: What’s the difference between a tuna, a piano and a pot of glue? 😀
Jo: I don’t know, what is the difference? 🤔
Mel: You can tuna piano but you can’t piano a tuna. 😆
Jo: [SIGHS] 😒 But what about the pot of glue?
Mel: I knew you’d get stuck there! 😂🤣
Jo: [GROANS] 😩

Pictures: Mel & Jo at a Castle Camp party (by Eric Bobrie)