Québec City: Giving Festivals Another Chance
March 2026
My first dance festival in years—and the beginning of a new chapter.
I had pretty much given up on dance festivals. I went to my first festival in 2006 and had been to quite a few on and off over the years, but my recent experiences had left me feeling like I didn’t quite belong and I would come home feeling more depleted than inspired.
After a very difficult year in 2025, I found myself searching for something to pour myself into. For over 20 years, dance had brought me so much joy. It had always been my safe space. And I found myself wanting more of it—not just more dancing, but more experiences, more learning, more growth.
I had recently been in Vancouver for a bachata weekender with Klau and Ros. I remember watching Klau dance and being completely in awe of her. It reignited something in me. I was becoming increasingly drawn to artists and styles I simply couldn’t access at home, and I realized that if I wanted more from my dancing, I was going to have to venture beyond my local dance community. And that meant giving festivals another chance.
The Québec Sensual Weekender felt like a good place to start.
I showed up in Québec City completely alone. And I definitely felt like the new girl—especially being the only one who didn’t speak French. I felt so nervous walking into a room where everyone seemed to already have their people. But I didn’t let that stop me from putting myself out there. I took the classes, talked to people I didn’t know, and even worked up the courage to ask the artists to dance. By Saturday, everything had changed. I had made friends, I had great dance connections, and somewhere along the way I stopped feeling like an outsider.
More surprisingly, I discovered that I loved being there alone. I could experience the weekend entirely on my own terms. There was no one else’s schedule to consider and no one to rely on as a social safety net. I could follow my own energy, meet new people, and make the experience completely mine. Something that had initially felt intimidating ended up feeling incredibly freeing.
I came home with my world feeling much bigger than it had a few days earlier. There were dancers I hadn’t met yet, artists I wanted to learn from, and entire dance communities outside my little corner of the world. I added Paris, New York, and Cádiz to my calendar, and for the first time I wasn’t nervous. I was excited to see how much more there was to experience.
The weekend in Québec was an incredible experience. But perhaps the most important shift was how I felt about coming home.
I sometimes feel like a secret agent living a double life: there is mom-me and not-mom-me, and whichever one I am being comes with a tinge of guilt about missing out on the other. But in Québec, I let myself fully inhabit the dancer in me. I danced, connected, stayed until the last song, and immersed myself in that part of my life without feeling guilty for being away. And when it was time to leave, I couldn’t wait to get home to my daughter and our pup, to slow mornings in my garden, and quiet nights playing board games. I didn’t feel like I was leaving something behind in Québec, and I didn’t feel like I had missed something by being there.
For once, those two parts of myself didn’t feel like they were competing. There was room in my life for both. And yet, I didn’t need to hold both at once. I could fully inhabit one, knowing there would still be room for the other when I returned.
The previous year had been a difficult one, and I think I needed something that reminded me how much life was still out there to experience. Québec gave me that. What was supposed to be a tentative return to festivals ended up feeling like the beginning of a completely new chapter with dance.
I don’t know how long this chapter will last, and I don’t need to. I just know that I want to live it fully enough that whenever it does evolve into something different, I won’t be left wondering what would have happened if I had given it more.
For the first time, coming home from a dance weekend didn’t feel like the end. It felt like the beginning.
