Friday, december 22nd a rather serious event - Annual award 2006 - was held in Balozi recreation centre. This is an annual event that takes together most of the Crazy boots dancers, their friends and relatives to greet the best them.

This year the event started with warm-up dances, which were followed by an opening ceremony with Paul McAdam from England. Right after the opening ceremony the first awards were granted to the winners, afterwards came a lot of dancing, thanks saying and performing.

The winners of this year are:

• Event of the year 2006 - "Kūru uguns II"
• Dance of the year 2006 - "Do Dat Dance (MIL)"
• Fried of the year 2006 - Tine Knisell & Renegads
• The most attractive dancer of year 2006 - Meldra Kukule
• The most diligent dancer of the year 2006 - Jolanta Rone
• The friendliest dancer of the year 2006 - Raivis Jasinskis
• Crazy boot of the year 2006 - Meldra Kukule

The event was wonderful and it continiued on the next day with workshop with Paul McAdam, small trip around Latvia, Ice Skating and a real latvian sauna in the evening. It's hard to tell the feelings and all the details about the event, however you can take a look at the pictures.

A couple of days ago "Jautrie zābaciņi" returned from the German Masters 2006 - a Masters in Line competition. The competition last 3 days and already on friday evening our dancers had to dance in preliminary rounds in order to compete in the finals. The long way to Füssen (aprox. 2100 km from Latvia) and bad sleep in the previous nights did leave an impact on the performances, however all dancers who were competing in the preliminary rounds (Irita, Lauma and Sandra) passed to finals.

Saturday was the big day for the individual dancers. The event was opened with speeches from city mayor and event organizers as well as a lap of honor of all dancers in their dancing outfits. And what's most important - the atmosphere in the hall was more friendly than competitive.

The competition passed without any stress and hurry, a couple of workshops were taken between the competition heats.

The evening show was just amazing - with performers from a local ballet school, alpine dancers, opera singers and of course the Masters in Line.

Sunday came with team competition, where besides the teams we could enjoy the dancing of quads and cabare teams. We participated in Team Line Open and we have to confess that we haven't felt such a great support from the audience before.

The final results of our participants are as follows:

Individual dancers:

• Sandra Nordena – 3.place (Newcomer Open Female)
• Meldra Kukule – 4.place (Newcomer Teen Female)
• Irita Rumbeniece – 5.place (Novice Open Female)
• Lauma Žihare – 6.place (Novice Open Female)

Team:

• „Jautrie zābaciņi” – 1.place (Team Open)

On the sunday night we visited a nice country convert with Doug Adkins & Stars'n'Bars, where we celebrated the results of competition together with our friends from the "Renegades ldjff.". Actually it's hard to describe the feelings in words. This event was a great experience, we talked to judges after the event and now we know that we are no the right way to success, there are just some small issues that we have to work on.

I would like to thank each and every of my dancers, drivers, photographers and fans. I am really proud of my you!

Hello everybody!
We are back from Belgium, where we spent last weekend to participate in Belgian country and western dance championships 2005. Actually the event was just amazing with celebration mood all over. All dancers were friendly, smiley and happy. We met Estonian line dancers as well. If we compare this event to Voora (Finland) where Finnish country and western dance championship was held, in Belgium everybody seemed to be like friends, not competitors. We sung some songs before competition and everybody supported other dancers.

It was hard to compete, because of the high level of competition and we didn't expect that the music for all dances will be changed to Christmas songs. Some adapted better, some not as well. However we have a great feeling of success, just because for the first time in the history of our line dance club, our dancer has finished at the 4th place from 12 competitors in her group. It means that we are on the correct track and after some work we will hopefully be able to get on the podium. As we concluded - everything depends on your own feelings - if you are stressed, worried about something, you can’t expect good results. If you can relax and dance from your heart, the results will be much better.

It's great to compete at such a wonderful event, like it was in Belgium and if luck is with you, then it's even better.

We have re-built our website, so we will be able to add more content in any number of different languages. As you might expect, the first language after the latvian language will be english.