Best moments of IZFM 2013

A few weeks have passed since Sep 21st and the International Zouk Flash Mob 2013. What a great idea it is to unite the world with dance! And unite it did: thousands of dancers in altogether 127 cities in 43 countries took part in the flash mob. The list includes such landmark places as New York, LA, Miami, Toronto,  Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Rome, London, Berlin, Barcelona, Athens, Moscow, Dubai, Sydney, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, Tokyo, Mumbai,.... but also some even more exotic locations like Fortaleza (Brazil), Flagstaff (USA), Stavanger (Norway), Santiago de Compostela (Spain), Minsk (Belarus), Irkutsk (Russia), Astana (Kazakhstan), Dnepropetrovsk (Ukraine), Beirut (Lebanon), Muscat (Oman) and Chiang Mai (Thailand) -- just to name a few! The tremendous work of numerous volunteers to make this event happen made it into a success story in a global scale.

Below is a compilation video of the event. Credits of the video go to the IZFM management team, all the coordinators and dancers that were involved all over the world as well as Swageberg Productions that edited this video. The true scale of this event is really captured in this video - despite the fact that many cities that performed the flash mob could not be included in the video it is still quite impressive!!

My favourite moments of IZFM 2013

Of course a moment that stood out for me personally was our Helsinki flash mob - read more about and see the video here! But aside that there were many extremely cool flash mobs around the world (check the links in the texts below for videos on each city)!

In many places the flash mobs included a number of beginner dancers - the flash mob was a great way to start zouk! The flash mob in Tunisia (video below) was performed by a group of zouk beginners. It's amazing what they could pull off and the venue was stunning, really highlighting the character of the place. Hope they get their zouk scene started there!

If you think about overcoming obstacles then you should see the flash mob in Princeton, New Jersey!

Perhaps my favourite video is from the iconic New York City. The flash mob was there run by the creators of this year's choreography, Henry and Claudia, who certainly also made sure it was done in a big scale.

Many other beautiful places and well known landmarks appear on the videos such as Bund in Shanghai, Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Kadriorg palace in Tallinn, Jaffa port in Tel Aviv, Osaka castle in Osaka.... It's fun to virtually "travel" the world via the flash mob videos!

The biggest flash mobs you could see perhaps in Brisbane and in Amsterdam but many other cities got together quite big groups as well. I really enjoyed watching this flash mob in São Luís, Brazil:

Next year...

Despite all the success, every event has its problems. Many issues that arose during first flash mob in 2012 were fixed this year but still people didn't agree on everything, mainly this year regarding the choreography. Zouk is a versatile dance that branches out to many different styles. And no matter what, it's truly impossible to please all, that's for sure. But the management team did try and anybody could submit their own choreo in the flash mob choreo competition. Hopefully next year the flash mob will have even more participants and the event will spread out to new territories. Let's put our differences aside and unite again! I hear the management team have already been making some cool plans so can't wait to see how the next year's event will unfold!

Keep an eye on this blog for more updates! You can read all my previous posts on flash mobs. You can also connect with the IZFM organisers via their site and the Facebook group.


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