About the Hoedown
Updated January 16, 2014
About the Emerald City Hoedown
2014 marks the 7th annual Emerald City Hoedown. From our earliest days, the Rain Country Dance Association had creating a hoedown weekend as one of our primary goals, inspired by events such as the IAGLCWDC hoedowns and Sundance Stompede. Starting out modestly in 2008 with one afternoon of dance workshops split between the Cuff Complex and the Century Ballroom, plus evening dances at the Cuff Complex and the Polish Hall, and with about 50 registered attendees, the Emerald City Hoedown has grown each year, to now be an entirely hotel-based event drawing instructors and attendees from around the Northwest and across the country.
In 2013, we were the host for the 20th annual IAGLCWDC convention and dance competition — the only member club to completely host an IAGLCWDC annual convention in eight years! The event was scoped to be three times the size of the 5th annual Emerald City Hoedown, featuring plenty of top-notch dancing and instructors from all across North America, plus a great sense of Seattle itself, and we exceed even those expectations by almost 50% with about 400 registered attendees! The 2014 hoedown will be more modest in size, but we expect to increase in size year after year.
About Rain Country Dance Association
Founded in 2005, the Rain Country Dance Association was created to ensure that Seattle and the Pacific Northwest continued to have a strong and growing GLBTQ country-western dance scene, a scene owned and shepherded by the dance community itself. In the intervening years, we have hosted six annual hoedown weekends, established two strong dance nights at our host bar, the Cuff Complex, plus periodic dance nights and special events throughout the Seattle metro area, and trained a half-dozen superb instructors and a similar number of DJs, seeing the level of dance skill in our community climb dramatically.
The Rain Country Dance Association forms the hub of strong, self-sustaining country-western dance community for the GLBTQ community in Seattle and throughout the Pacific Northwest. Rain Country is a 501(c)3 non-profit.
For more about the Rain Country Dance Association, visit our website.
And be sure to check out our sister clubs: Vancouver Timberline Dance Society (Vancouver, BC) and Stomptown (Portland, OR)!
About the IAGLCWDC
Rain Country is a member of the International Association of Gay/Lesbian Country Western Dance Clubs (IAGLCWDC). The IAGLCWDC was founded in 1994 in Louisville, Kentucky by the representatives of eight GLBTQ country-western dance clubs, focused on networking between and supporting the growth of the GLBTQ country-western dance scene and clubs. The IAGLCWDC has included over 50 members clubs from five countries on three continents, with over 35 annual and semi-annual conventions and a dozen dance competitions over the course of the past 20-plus years.
The IAGLCWDC is a 501(c)3 non-profit and is a partner organization in GLISA (host of the World OutGames) and NASSPDA (North American Same Sex Partner Dance Association).
For more about the IAGLCWDC, visit their website.