Hello everyone, I'm Fox and was in fact the person in charge of the ball.
First I would like to say thank you to those that have started this thread and have added to it. Every response in it will be taken seriously into consideration and used as a means for me to shape the ball toward hopefully becoming better in the coming con year (2013). Your concerns are valuable feedback and I want you all to feel your comments are important.
This was my first time handling the ball or an event like it, so trying to take into account the fire and safety cap with the room size was incredibly difficult. I was trying to find a proper amount of attendees while figuring in a good spacing for the much larger and more complex dance moves such as swing. Doing this was something that perhaps I could use some more work on, but I was trying to err on the side of safety rather than to pack the room for all and have an unfortunate occurrence.
On the thought of having two balls, while the idea is something to consider and it would be something the attendees may prefer it is not possible to do this at this time and in our current location. We have only a single room that is large enough to accommodate such a sized dance and it is one of a few events all competing for said space. A concert, two "rave" style dances, cosplay chess, AMV contest, etc. all share the same room. If we doubled the ball something would suffer. While I would have been so incredibly happy to have everyone attend, it just was not possible.
Nor would it be possible to split the ball into sections. Doing so may not seem like it would take more time but it truly will. Emptying a room and refilling it will take time and staff we just did not have at our disposal. As it is, we had to cut the play list by nearly a third to fit into the time slot given us and we still went slightly into the time given to the rave.
Making something a ticketed event will not solve this either. Con policy for ticketed events is that you are guaranteed a space in the event you have a ticket for only if you are in line at the opening of the event and prior to us allowing those without tickets in. If you are late and have a ticket we won't pull someone from an event for you unless it is a paid event such as sake tasting.
When it came to the dress code, we did in fact post the code in plenty of time for people to review it prior to the event. It was posted online at least a month prior (And I did receive several emails asking for clarification in that time.) and the morning of the event at both door and info booth. I explained to the lovely yoji and maids "recognizable cosplay" meant it must be recognized as a cosplay, not just someone wearing animal ears and claiming it is. As a cosplayer I understand it is not always easy to come up with the funds necessary to create elaborate outfits or to fit a costume to you but there are several ways around such issues. That someone was given priority for their costume actually infuriates me, and should I figure out whom among staff did that they will be spoken to about it.
That should not have happened and I deeply regret it if it did and apologize for such unacceptable behavior.
On behalf of the hosts, we did in fact have about 10 of them out there, working the walls and floor to sweep people into dancing. Mind you that is 10 people identified by a large boutonnerre to approximately 2-300 attendees. With an average (from what I saw) of 25-30 wall flowers, it was not possible to get everyone constantly dancing. Particularly if you are doing a full dance with some one and not just get on the floor, dance for a second, grab another flower. They were working hard, and constantly, myself included.
In reference to the music, we tried our best. There is always going to be something that displeases someone and while we tried sticking to more "nerdy" style it is hard to find proper songs to fit dances without finding the "rave-y" fits. We shall have more time to plan this out and fix the play list accordingly.
And as far as dance classes are concerned, we have discussed this repeatedly among those involved and have decided, as long as the teacher is willing and able, to have the classes on two days, thus doubling the amount of people learning.
Like I said before, though, this is still an event that is a work in progress. Hopefully we can fix it so that more people will be satisfied in future years. I personally considered it a success and feel my hosts were wonderful. I enjoyed interacting with the attendees even if I was not the best dancer.
