The Story Behind the Heatwave...
Dancing is a great pastime, it lets you meet many new friends when you dance at your local bars or when you stop by somewhere and take dance lessons. Everyone on the team met through dance lessons and you can usually find a good majority of us dancing up a storm at either Charlies Bar in Phoenix or Cash Inn Country, also in Phoenix. Dancing is a very competitive sport and a couple different associations exists to further encourage gays, lesbians, bisexuals to enhance their skills to ultimately compete. One such organization is the International Association of Gay/Lesbian Country Western Dance. Another one is the international Gay Rodeo Association which along with the Reno Gay Rodeo's, predate all entities as it relates to competition for gay dancers to compete as a team or as individuals against other gay dancers. The history of country and western dancing and IGRA go back about 22 years. The first Dance Finals was held in 1987 alongside the annual convention. Several gay country bars around the country organized the finals and it proved to be a very popular evening entertainment event. Co-incidentally this was also the same year that the IGRA Rodeo Finals were held in Hayward, California. The IGRA finals whether it be Dance, Rodeo, or Royalty bring together the top contestants from each association to compete for each event championship. In its initial years, Dance Finals were attended by many cowboys and cowgirls and it was a huge draw as entertainment. More recently the event has been split away from Rodeo Finals as has the Royalty Competition. The Dance Finals were moved in 2008 to Las Vegas and were to become a part of the IGRA University weekend. Under this new format it is the showcase event of the weekend. As it grows in popularity again and attracts the best teams the Arizona Heatwave hopes to compete against the very best teams across the IGRA associations.
The Arizona Heatwave was first conceptualized in the summer of 2008. The founder, Ferdy Q. was trying to figure out a way for AGRA to gain prominence and inclusion at the larger IGRA level. At that time his home association was having leadership changes and member disagreement. At that point Ferdy decided that he needed to do something to bring positive attention to AGRA. That same summer Charlies bar introduced a fresh faced line dance instructor by the name of Carl. The first time that Ferdy went to linedance lessons in August also happened to be the first night that Carl was teaching at Charlies, so one could say that it was meant to be! After a couple months of friendship Ferdy asked Carl what he thought about the idea of creating a line dance team that would eventually compete in the following years IGRA finals. Carl loved the idea and together the two painstankingly brought together the team. Ferdy handled the overall management and logistics that go into managing the activities of the team including fundraising, uniforms, travel, membership and proper AGRA/IGRA protocals. Carl dedicated himself to creating and teaching an original piece that was to be used to compete in Las Vegas. Auditions were not held and the team was open to all dancers that wanted to go to Vegas and compete. An additional challenge was created with regards to fundraising as taking 14 people to Las Vegas is not cheap. Considering the current economic meltdown, it was a lofty goal to raise enough money to send everyone to the finals. With the help of Charlies Bar, its patrons, AGRA members donating willingly at our first performance, and especially Kevin McSweeney aka Pussy LeHoot who let us have all of our fundraisers at her shows. we raised more than enough money to send everyone to compete in las Vegas.
More recently Ferdy and Carl have been discussing apperances for the Arizona Heatwave at various community events. Cash Inn Country, Arizona's lesbian country bar also came on board as a partner of the Arizona Heatwave.They have hosted our auditions and host our practices on Tuesday nights alongside Charlies Bar, where we practice Wednesday nights.
After a successful audition process in May 2009, we are confident that we have a much stronger Heatwave. Even though we lost 4 founding members we gained 4 new very impressive dancers. We also brought on board 3 female dancers which brings the team composition to 3 females and 12 males. We could not be happier with both sexes being represented on our team that encompasses all members of AGRA.
Work continues daily as many, many things have arisen that directly relate to the team and expanding our product. 
Arizona Heatwave 2008-2009
Front Row: (L to R): Carl T., George H., Richard H., Nikki S., Rocky C., Scott V., Ronaldo
Back Row: (L to R): Ramon S., Ferdy Q., David S. PJ H., Charles G., Chris T., Alfredo Q