ESTEVAN — The Estevan Downtown Business Association's Street Dance saw another great year, with over 1,100 people attending the big party. And even the rain and thunderstorm that hit Estevan that night couldn't spoil the event.
The dance took place July 22 and 23 on Fourth Street. Saskatoon's Harreson James Band was the featured act, while the opening group was Long Live the Glory with Estevan's Jesse Gibson.
Robert Godfrey with Lemon Wedge Marketing, which is a part of the DBA, said they had a few more people than they had last year, and many guests came from outside the community. He attributed the success of the third annual event to several factors.
"Street dance went amazing this year. We had a great turnout of people, and we're really happy with how smoothly everything went from the setup to the actual event happening, and even the cleanup. Everything went really well," Godfrey said. "Another thing that we were really happy about is the number of people that we had come from near and far. We had people from across the province, from Manitoba, from the States. It was just really great to see all the people that come out to enjoy this really exciting event.
"I heard from a number of people in attendance that they had come to Estevan for the weekend, they were spending time with friends and family and included the street dance in their plans. Another thing that's a big help is our partnership with the Estevan Motor Speedway. I know a lot of the Americans that we had in attendance were people that had come up for the races, and we did a deal with them so that anyone out at the race could get the advance ticket price at the gate as well.
"So, I think those types of partnerships really help get people to come to this event from outside of our community."
He added that the great bands entertaining at the street dance, Long Live the Glory and the Harreson James Band, who performed at the Grey Cup, were another attraction.
A thunderstorm and pouring rain hit around midnight, and the band couldn't return to the stage due to lightning for an hour, but hundreds of people chose to stay and then continued partying once the musicians came back.
"In the four years that we've had this street dance downtown, between the art gallery and now the Estevan Downtown Business Association, we have been really lucky in that we haven't had rain until this year, so we didn't know what that would be like if we did get rain," Godfrey said. "Obviously, we did get rained on, and while there was a number of people that did go home, we had hundreds of people that stayed.
"We just had about an hour delay where we couldn't get on the stage due to the lightning protocol, but once we got started up at 1 a.m. again, everyone partied like it had never happened, and the fun just continued on."
The event went smoothly thanks to many volunteers. Even though the DBA was short-handed this year, those people who decided to help made everything work well.
"We had a really great group of volunteers. A lot of them stayed the entire night from the gates opening at 9 p.m. until about 2:30 when most of our volunteers got to go home, which we were thankful for. We had volunteers from the downtown business association, but also from the community. And we were really happy to have all of the volunteers," Godfrey said noting that they hope to grow their volunteer base going further.
Estevan police said that they patrolled the street dance and are happy to report that there were lots of people in attendance and no issues. Godfrey also said the crowd has been phenomenal.
"We have been lucky every single year having no incidents coming from the street dance. And that continued again this year. We weren't sure how it would go when we didn't have any entertainment or any music playing for over an hour. But everyone was just in really high spirits. And they behaved really well," said Godfrey.
"We debriefed with our security after the event, and they commented too how happy they were with everything. They saw no incidents. It makes putting on this event that much better when we know that the community is respectful of the rules and are well-behaved."
He also thanked everyone involved with the event and said they are bringing it back.
"A big thank you to the entire community who came out and partied with us. I also want to thank the volunteers and the sponsors who make this event happen every single year. And I want to remind everyone to get ready because we will be announcing next year's events in about a month or so. The street dance will be coming back for years to come. And we're really looking forward to being able to continue bringing this event to the community and continue having this tourism draw for the area and getting to showcase Saskatchewan talent on the street dance stage," Godfrey said.
