Jurassic Bal

HI Team,

We will be opening merch orders soon (likely next week), and to try and make it as easy for you as possible (despite the number of options), we have updated our website with information on the type and style of tshirts we will be offering: https://www.jurassicbal.com/shop

You will have the following options at checkout:

- Brand and style, i.e. Bella + Canva or AS Colour (details of materials and fit on our website)
- Colour
- Size
- Full colour logo or black outline design

Please bear in mind that the black outline design will only truly work on light colour shirts.

To help you a little bit, we have created some mock-ups of different colours and design style - similar post to come up this week for the rest of available merch :D

Watch this space for more updates coming this week and if you have any question, please comment, email or message us on Facebook.

Because we have a great balance of leaders and followers, and can increase capacity a little, we have added a couple of leaders and followers passes on TryBooking.

If you have already booked a social pass and want to upgrade, let us know via email at [email protected]

Otherwise, tell your friends: https://www.trybooking.com/CVSWG

Happy Saturday night

Some more passes have become available because TryBooking. We're close to sold out, but you still have the opportunity to book.

Apologies... I guess you broke the system!

Also, congratulations leaders for registering early. We love you

TryBooking is being fun and taking forever to release tickets which were in carts but not purchased.

There are a couple of partnership, followers and leaders passes left.

Again, thank you for the love. It was ridiculous and I'm sure very stressful for you.

Feel free to email if you need anything.

Ok that was... Wowsers 🥹🥹🥹

Y'all, thank you ❤️❤️❤️

Please give us some time to process and get back to those who have already emailed about waitlists.

Honestly, we have no words. Just all the feelings.

It's registration day, and we're very nervous but we also want to remind everyone to be kind to yourself and each other.

From an admin perspective: we will contact those who have opted for the "I need help" and "flexible parenting" passes individually and privately. This will hopefully happen reasonably quickly, but feel free to reach out if you have not heard from us after the weekend.

If the event sells out, we will have a waitlist option which will consist of you emailing [email protected]. Your spot on the waitlist wi'll be assigned on a first come first served basis so again, please be fair and respectful when interacting with us. We sadly can't cater to everyone's needs and wants, but will certainly try to help however we can.

Finally, the link y'all have been waiting for! Registrations will be on TryBooking:

Jurassic Bal 2025 3 days works Balboa workshops, live music, world class entertainment featuring: - Sylvia Sykes & Bobby White - Jennifer Lee & Andreas Olsson

Competition announcement!

Inspired by Shani Brown and Matt Richey's class at the Brisbane Balboa Weekend, we have decided to bring you a new competition. We're bringing the mix&match and strictly comps back, and in 2025 we're also introducing the CROSSOVER MIX'N'MATCH competition or Balboa to Non-Traditional Jazz music.

To honour the roots of jazz and dance, this new competition will be in a similar format to your standard mix'n'match with a twist: dancing to more modern/non-traditional jazz music as performed by legendary Black artists. We want to celebrate Black excellence and you will groove to pop, funk, rnb, you name it. There are so many incredible Black performers out there who have released the BEST music to shuffle to, it'd be a shame to miss the opportunity to turn it into a fun competition open to all!

Registrations to all competitions will open on Friday 1pm AEDT (interstate times will be confirmed later this week to make sure nobody misses out).

FYI, we have updated the website with some more info on comps and merchandise available. Any questions, please reach out.

Jurassic Bal 4-6 April 2025 ABout us Jurassic Bal is back in 2025, with new dates: 4-6 April 2025Thanks to your support in 2024, we decided to do it all over again and bring you a even better event. We took your feedback into account, changed some things, updated others and we are ready for 2025!2025 will bring workshops, soci...

6 days until registrations open, so let's talk about travel.

For those of you who aren't close enough to drive (think Melbourne and Sydney), Canberra is easily accessible by plane or bus.

We know flying to Canberra can be expensive so a couple of tips for those of you hoping to make it next April:

- Flights to Sydney are often quite a bit cheaper. From Sydney airport, you can then catch the Murrays bus which will cost you approximately $80-100 return. It's a 3+hours drive from Sydney airport and the bus will drop you off right in the middle of Canberra. The buses run every hour, starting 8am from Sydney to Canberra, or 1am Canberra to Sydney airport.

- We are talking to a couple of hotels in Canberra city who have agreed to negotiate discounted rates for attendees. This is not going to make it A LOT cheaper, but it'll certainly help. We will share more as we finalise arrangements so you can decide on what option is best for you.

- In the meantime, we highly recommend you pre-book your accommodation. There are plenty of online booking websites offering free cancellation up to a couple of days before the event dates (booking.com and the likes).

- Feel free to use the event page to try and connect with each other for car-sharing or accommodation bookings - keep it nice and respectful, and if in doubt about someone's comments or offer, do reach out for advice.

Looking forward to seeing y'all in a few months 😄

Hey Friends, Krystel here!

So we know you’re all excited and we’ve received quite a number of messages which we are slowly responding to.

I want to take the opportunity to say we have heard some of the feedback, and are therefore trying something new this year (what? again?).

I don’t have kiddos (only cats who happen to be mostly capable of taking care of themselves – unless they’re orange…) and I shouldn’t assume everyone co-parents and can attend the whole weekend or has a partner who dances they can share a pass with.

To that effect, we’re introducing the 🌟Flexible Parenting pass🌟!
So what is it exactly? If you’re a parent and can only attend a couple of hours of workshops over the weekend and maybe one or 2 socials, this is for you. We appreciate you may not have the ability to share a Parent pass with a partner (because they may not dance or you’re single parenting), so let’s try and work something out together!

Similar to the “I need help” pass, we’ll work with you on what you want to attend on the weekend so we can cater to your availability as best we can. We can’t make promises because balancing numbers is HARD, but we’ll give it our best go!

On a side note, if you have children and are attending the event, we are kid friendly during the day and on Sunday night. Might not be your hatchling’s jam but you can bring them along to sit and watch (or dance with us all) if you need to 😊

Happy Brisbane Balboa Weekend day!

We hope we'll get to see a few familiar faces over the weekend, but we also wanted to drop some more info about the passes.

We know how stressful purchasing passes to events has become, so we're going to try and do things ever so slightly differently this year.

Once again, all standard passes we had last year will be available to purchase on the 18th of October, but we have now added a partnership pass, so you can register with a friend of the opposite role.

We appreciate there is no perfect way to release passes, so one last thing: LEADERS, register early! It's really super useful for your fellow followers (and organisers too!).

See you on the dancefloor at B*W!

The test t-shirts have arrived! In 2025 (if all goes to plan), we'll be offering different colours and designs for t-shirts and other merch (yet to be determined).

These are the prototypes which we received today and we're super happy with the way the design looks printed! We're now trying to source the comfiest cotton or cotton mix around and will confirm colours available asap.

In the meantime, if there's anything you'd like to see as part of our merch stall next April, feel free to comment!

Now taking Expressions of Interest (EOI)!

Do you want to help us create a better event next year? Do you like dealing with people and having fun while doing it?

As you may recall, Krystel did a lot of the volunteer coordination, decoration and *stuff* this year because it seemed right not to take anyone’s time away from the dancing (or at least as little as possible). It worked (ish) but the post-event burnout was real!

So we’re looking for help with the following and would LOVE to hear from you:

🦕 Volunteer coordinator: we need help making sure people are there for set-up and pack-up, door shifts etc (door shifts were limited last year because it was essentially sold out). If that’s your jam, we’d love to hear from you.

🦖 Safe space peeps: we had you this year and we’d love to have you work with us again in 2025. Looking for people who aren’t scared of conflict (not that we’re expecting any, but you never know), are great at communicating, and have experience in safe space practices (or would like to give it a shot).

🌟 What do you get in return, one might ask? Our perpetual gratitude, and some dinosaur goodies and the opportunity to make Jurassic Bal a better event!

If you want to chat about the above (and maybe more!?) email us at [email protected] or send us a message on Facebook 😊

Introducing your MCs extraordinaire for 2025! So thankful these two are joining us to provide hilarious entertainment over the Jurassic Bal 2025 weekend.

Intrepid explorers from Queensland, Rachel and Tom, are distinguished dabblers in dance and dinosaurs. They both allowed Swing Era dances to consume their lives 6 years ago, and since then have looked to be involved however they can, be it running classes, DJing or merry mischief making (they're very good at that 👌).

Their dinosaur knowledge is globally regarded, with both Rachel and Tom being able to name three different dinosaurs each. They even plan to watch Jurassic Park before taking the stage as MCs of the hottest dinosaur dance party of 2025 - Jurassic Bal. They’ll try to not be too silly, but make no promises.

Welcome to the team Rachel and Tom! 🦖🦕

Oh hey! Guess what? We had the amazingly talented Gosia Aniolkowska from Gotcha Art Studio work on our logo this year, and we are thrilled to share it with y'all!

Gosia was incredibly patient (especially with time difference and our busy real life schedule) and did an outstanding job! You may recognise the style from other excellent events and bands designs. If not, check out her website (and buy all the things): www.gotchaartstudio.com