Quality AND Quantity
I'm not sure if there is an official record of attendees; I imagine it's hard to track because some people will get full weekend classes but not attend many or any classes, and some people may show up for individual dances multiple times. But based on the group photo and data around the number of passes sold, I used my favorite AI chatbot, Gemini, to estimate that there are probably 600 to 1000 active students during the days, spread across 4 to 5 concurrent workshop tracks, and the evening dances (five in total, although the first and last are more sparsely attended) might get as high as 1500+ attendees, with 800 to 1000 people in the main ballroom for dancing at any given time.
What's more, these dancers are top notch, for the most part. There are beginners to be sure, but many of the best dances I've had have been here at Camp Hollywood. In thinking about it, I related to a sort of dance roulette. There are so many people at the event who you may not have met or seen before, and you have no idea if they are any good. I know sometimes people watch others dance to decide who they want to dance with next, but I think, more often than not, both partners are going in blind, unsure of the others' skill level or abilities, and you just go for it. This requires rapidly learning each other's style and connection and trying to match the energy and styling while also learning to lead or follow with this connection on the fly. And the cool part is that, at least where I'm at now with my ability, it usually works out pretty well and turns into an awesome dance. Like a happy accident, but intentional. It's hard to describe. And there's also a little bit of finality to it, or to borrow a Japanese term I've recently leaned into a bit, "mono no aware" which is about the beautiful sadness of impermanence. In other words, you might have the dance of a lifetime with some random partner, and never see them again or dance with them again. Or, as luck has it sometimes, you see them next on the competition floor, absolutely blowing everyone's minds, and you get a boost of confidence knowing you danced with that top tier competitor.
Hollywood seemed to have stepped up the classes a lot in 2026. When I plan my schedule (on my TripIt app - I've been told more than once this weekend how Type A I am), I usually select an option 1 and option 2 class, and sometimes an option 3, so that I can bounce to another class if the one I started isn't doing it for me. I did no bouncing this year. I did choose to sit out and watch for part of a class, from sheer exhaustion and preservation of energy for the upcoming events, but every class I chose as my first option was so engaging and inspiring and all the things, I couldn't help myself. Honestly, well done, CH instructors and organizers! The classes were really well done this year! A Study in Happiness, Joy and Fulfillment
I do a lot of reading and considering concepts around happiness, and the intersection of physical health and mental wellbeing. Specifically, I've been learning and practicing shinrin-yoku (forest bathing) of Japan, and hygge from Denmark.
I think it's especially interesting to study the Danes' way of life, political and economic factors, and their philosophies like hygge, as well as those of the other Scandinavian countries, because they rank so highly on the world happiness studies consistently. From the perspective of an outsider looking in, one might wonder if they're delusional - they suffer terribly cold winters in almost absolute darkness, not seeing the sun for days potentially, have lost every war they've ever fought in, and aren't as productive as, say, the UK or Japan or US. By traditional American benchmarks—constant productivity, hustle, and economic output—they might appear to be underperforming. Yet their robust social safety net provides a baseline security that fosters genuine peace of mind, freeing people from the chronic survival anxieties that keep so many Americans trapped in exhausting circumstances. And their embracing the winter cold by building this hygge philosophy is a way to make lemonade out of lemons.
Yet the one aspect that I don't like about hygge is that it requires the contrast in order to be most hygge. The example at the beginning of The Little Book of Hygge is a group of friends sitting around drinking hot drinks, and the comment was that it would be more hygge if there was a bad storm outside. Later, when the book talks about Christmas preparations, it says that the burden of hosting a holiday puts pressure and stresses people out leading up to the holiday, at which time a verbal confirmation of hygge is a final relief valve of all that stress. I love the holidays and I don't see why holiday preparations can't be joyful and must be stressful. It seems to me that life will hand us enough negatives naturally; minimizing the negatives within our control shouldn't detract from the positive impact of the highs.
So coming off the high from Camp Hollywood, I wanted to try to capture what makes this event so special, at least for me. Much like, Las Vegas, New York City, and Disneyland, what you get out of Camp Hollywood is personal depending on what you want to get out of it. CH veterans will advise newcomers not to try to do everything because, while it's not impossible to try to do everything, it is at the physical limits of human beings to go hard the whole time you can. And actually, because there are often multiple interesting classes happening at once, it is impossible to do all the things.
What struck me last year is that this even is so full of joy, it's like a bubble of positivity, a sanctuary for the love of dance, away from the world of crappy politics, work stress, and the challenges of adulting and doing life. I've searched for a word or phrase that describes this specific feeling, and couldn't find something that fit well, so I'm coining my own term. Based on the title of the blog, you've probably guessed it: Choresonasynphoria.
I workshopped this with Gemini because I wanted to fully encapsulate the feeling, and while I wished it was a little more concise, brevity has never been a strength of mine, and I think the particles are necessary to get my full meaning. So what's it mean? I started with the feeling I get at Camp Hollywood of unbridled joy resulting from a love of dance. The dance is the joy and the love of dancing for the sake of dancing itself is the point. But it's not just when I'm dancing that I have this feeling. It's being in the room where it happens (wink wink). It's the possibility and opportunity to dance, but also in sharing the love of the dance with others, even without participating in that moment. It's a togetherness, and a joy, and a contagion, all based on dance. It's not the dance itself, the dance is the means.
So weaved into this one word are four parts:
- Choreo- (Ancient Greek choreia): The art and spirit of dance. It is active. It can be technically and physically challenging. It is beautiful. So few things in life are all of these things, and those who dance have a love and appreciation for it because of what it is.
- -resona- (Latin resonare): To echo, ring back, and amplify through a space. This is the contagious nature of the joy and love of dance.
- -syn- (Ancient Greek -syn-): Together, in unison, united as a community. The swing dance community has always surprised me by how welcoming it is. When having to move to Texas under duress, I found comfort when I found a swing dance community there.
- -phoria (Ancient Greek phoros/euphoria): Carrying a deep, transcendent state of joy. The pre-existing word I found closest to the feeling of joy I wanted to describe was Eudaimonia from Ancient Greek; Aristotle used the term to describe a deeper state of human flourishing and peak fulfillment. It is the joy that arises from actively engaging your skills, expressing virtue or artistry, and living fully in alignment with what brings you vitality. It's a little like the modern concepts of flow or being in the zone. I thought this was true, but it didn't have the community and contagious effects I also feel, so I wanted to incorporate part of the word while adding those other elements to it.
A Happiness Spectrum
Writing with the assistance of AI chatbots can be really insightful, and I want to share a question and answer directly, because I thought it was really good. I've been reading and trying to practice and embrace concepts from shinrin-yoku and hygge recently, but was also reminded of the spirit of aloha and Costa Rica's philosophy of pura vida. It struck me that there are some common threads in human anthropology: an underlying drive to anchor ourselves in presence, cultivate gratitude and honor the light precisely because we know the dark exists. Other concepts include Norway's friluftsliv ("free air life"), Japan's wabi-sabi ("imperfection and transience"), ubuntu of Southern Africa, and Finland's sisu. Anyways, the question Gemini asked me was:
"Hygge is inherently about shelter and sanctuary (retreating indoors from harsh weather or stress), whereas Aloha and Pura Vida are about flow and connection with your surroundings. Where does Choresonasynphoria land on that spectrum—is it an escape from the world, or an exuberant engagement with it?"
I found this a deeply interesting question with no obvious answer. Instead, I thought about A Wrinkle in Time and imagined folding the proposed spectrum so that both ends meet. My answer, then, was that if the spectrum is sanctuary on one end and flow and connection on the other end, Choresonasynphoria is not in between, it's the extreme of both. The spectrum folds in on itself and it's the best on both extremes. Choresonasynphoria refutes the idea that stress-free sanctuary and high-energy connection are opposites. Like a fold in space time, it brings both extremes together: you are simultaneously in an intense, high-cardio, high-engagement flow and wrapped in a profound sense of communal sanctuary, in a bubble of joy deflecting the outside stressors of life.
Can You Feel It?
The physical manifestation of Choresonasynphoria, for me, is the soreness in my cheeks. My face physically hurts from smiling so much, and maybe laughing, and sometimes even crying tears of joy and appreciation. The workout of the dance is felt in my feet, knees, quads, calves, glutes (the other cheeks), back, shoulders, neck and arms. The hands and the head may be the only parts of the body that are largely exempt from the physical repercussions of dancing for 50+ hours over the course of 5 days. But the cheeks hurt not because of the dance, but because of the joy, because of the Choresonasynphoria.
And the joy isn't just from the dance. It's from the community, the togetherness, the fun, the creativity. I love a good theme party, and Camp Hollywood delivers themes in spades. Every year, we are encouraged to embody four themes, which change every year. The Barbie theme from a couple years ago was hilarious because every pink-clad woman greeted one another with, "Hey Barbie!" with a responding, "Hey Barbie!" in return. It never got old.
Stepping up my CH theme game even more this year, I worked really hard on my outfit for the office theme. The official description on the website said, "Tonight we’re back to work at The Office – wear your executive or secretarial gear to dance…" Since I despise the show referenced, I leaned into my infatuation with office supplies (I can't explain why, but I'm like a kid in the candy store when I'm in the office supply aisle or store). I designed a custom repeating pattern on a vintage mint-green background, layering paperclips, retro staplers, Rolodexes, rotary phones with coiled cords, and classic typewriters. Having no luck finding a seamstress to construct it, I dove headfirst into a sewing challenge that far exceeded my skill level. The end product wasn't boutique-ready, but I was damn proud of it—and even more thrilled to spot another dancer wearing a skirt made from one of my original fabric designs!
And while I love dancing with both old friends and complete strangers, and winning dancer roulette so frequently, taking a break and watching the dancing is just as joyful for me. I think anyone, even without a lot of dance knowledge, can appreciate the spectacle and feel the infectious energy of the dancers and the audience. But there's also a deeper level of appreciation that comes from learning the vocabulary of the dance moves and recognizing when people execute them well or remix them in a surprising way. There are layers of joy in both the dancing and the watching.
Do It Anyways
When the dancing was all over, I started my recovery with a dip in the hot tub Tuesday morning. I ended up in a deeply engaging conversation with a dancer from New York who dubbed my philosophies a "hot tub TED talk," to my great amusement. He said something, though, that deeply resonated with me because it stirred up something I may have been trying to ignore or overlook: that this event can be a bit cliquey at times. I definitely find this to be true, and maybe I assumed I felt alone in this thinking, which in hindsight is obviously absurd.
Nevertheless, I think the point is to not let that stop you. The fear of entry may be high, but it's mostly self-imposed. You can test out waters until you find your people, and I hope you never feel outright picked on in this community. The cliques are real, but they are minor noise compared to the signal of the dance and the fun and the joy. And that joy can be accessed by anyone willing to step by the fear of entry.
Choresonasynphoria in Daily Life
One book's messaging has stuck with me for a long time; it was Alex Pang's Rest, and part of it talked about rest not as a couch potato vegging and binge watching TV, but that active rest is more restorative and activates different parts of the brain. Swing dancing, for me, is both a cardio workout but it's also a restorative rest in that it requires a different kind of brain power and learning, and also brings people together for (generally positive) socializing. Almost all studies about happiness and aging well point to relationships with people as a strong contributing factor, and while the relationships formed in swing dance may not be the strongest, they are a different kind of relationship that enriches a life well lived.
And while it is not sustainable for most of us to go Camp Hollywood-hard all the time, we also don't have to wait a year to experience Choresonasynphoria. Joining dance troupes, practicing a solo jazz routine like Shim Sham or Tranky Doo in a class or group, or just going out dancing regularly can give us doses of the joy throughout the year and give us an active respite from the drama and stress of life.
