Floorcraft in practice - 14 tips for the dance floor (Part 2)

In Part 1 you could read Zouk The World's introduction to floorcraft!

Now let's get to work - here are 14 practical tips to improve your floorcraft! This includes some general dance floor etiquette and basic leading & following skills - all you need to make the dance floor safe and enjoyable for everybody.

Some of the tips towards the end of the list are categorised specifically for leaders and some for followers but all are important to know no matter whether you lead or follow.

Social dancing floorcraft - dance floor survival basics (Part 1)

Imagine a big open space and your favorite song - you can already see yourself dancing across the floor, can’t you? I love a dance that covers the entire floor space, gliding from one end of the room to the other. But most times you go out dancing you don’t have a massive open space: you’re on a dance floor full of people.

The dance floor is open to everybody and no matter how crowded the floor is and no matter if you’re a beginner or a professional dancer, you have an equal share of the floor. So how can I get the best out of the space so that everybody on the dance floor can enjoy their moment? Well, I looked it up. Welcome to our “Floorcraft 101”!

Baltic Sensual Weekend 2014

Whenever there's a zouk event closeby - I'm there. And so I was at the Baltic Sensual Weekend in Estonia last weekend! This was the second edition of the event that last year took place in Villa Andropoff, now in Hotel Lepanina in the area of Kabli, about half an hour drive south from the "summer capital of Estonia", Pärnu, and about 180 km from Tallinn. The idea seemed to be to gather Baltic & Northern European zouk & kizomba dancers under the same roof, learn some new moves & refresh on the fundamentals, leave the city for some nature & fresh air - and of course to party until early morning!

And what can I say? Mission accomplished!

Zouk in the Netherlands .....gezellig!

There are a couple contenders in Europe for the title of the biggest zouk city. For quite a while Prague, Barcelona, London and Amsterdam have been at the top of the list. All the aforementioned cities have a large number of zouk teachers, dance schools, congresses and party nights and are pretty much neck and neck for the #1 zouk destination in Europe.

Lately, I've been hearing that the zouk scene in Amsterdam is not like it was in its heydays and perhaps Prague and Barcelona are now in reign...? Be that as it may, I was in Amsterdam last week and certainly had to go check out the local zouk scene!

See the end of the post for full list of zouk in Amsterdam & Netherlands!

AfroLatin Flow - a hot dance weekend in Helsinki!

It was the warmest weekend of May when AfroLatin Flow arrived to Helsinki. Not just hot artists and sensual dance styles but also warm weathers, yay! Those three put together means we were in for a very steamy weekend!

Helsinki in the end of May - yay!

AfroLatin Flow is a three-day festival for the kizomba, zouk and bachata dancers, organised by IDNZ. There was quite a number of talented artists involved:

Kizomba, Semba and Tarraxinha: Sara López, Mafalda Amado & Alphonse Delette, Zé Barbosa & Marta Miranda, Rui & Catarina from AfroLatin Connection, Jazzy Cubango & Giselle Dias, Nemanja Sonero & Laura Zaray, Greg Martin.

Brazilian zouk: Pasty Pieternelle & Josta Ruby, Kwok One, Ossi Kimmelma.

Bachata: Carlos Cinta, Iñaki Fernandez, Andre Haikal & Arina Vesman


From the line-up you could notice that the kizomba-semba-tarraxinha team was the biggest one! It certainly was the main style in the parties but in the workshop tracks you could spend pretty much the whole time doing just one style (kizomba, zouk or bachata) - but surely those that wanted to mix styles got the most out of this event!

I was "taking it easy" that weekend - which meant I only signed up for the five night party marathon, and skipped the workshops this time.

Social dancing in Helsinki - where to dance salsa, bachata, zouk and kizomba?

If you're looking for where to go dancing in Helsinki you've come to the right place! The social dance scene is booming in our little northern corner of the world!!

Below a run-down of all the parties and socials for salsa (Cuban and LA), bachata, Brazilian zouk, kizomba and semba happening in Helsinki at the moment:

Monday's Afrolatin Night at Uggla - the upstairs salsa room

The stylish Tallinn Salsa Festival

It has been a busy start of the year - but I'm not complaining!

Last weekend I made a detour to the Tallinn Salsa Festival, to see my friends in Estonia, and to see if I could still dance any salsa!? The artist line-up was an interesting mix; Terry & Cecile (LA salsa), African Jet (LA salsa), Erodys & Tenna (Cuban salsa), Mark-Anthony (NY salsa), Felicien & Isabelle (kizomba), Andre & Arina (salsa & tango), Nemanja & Asya (salsa & kizomba), Joseph Davids (salsa & bachata), Xandy & Evelyn (zouk), Marco Zanella (salsa & bachata), San Miguel (Cuban salsa)... So I was expecting a nice combination of different Latin, African and Brazilian dance styles!

Party time! ¡Bailamos!

I was in fact going to the festival just to party (- am I getting lazy?). The organisers had managed to get an impressive venue for Friday & Saturday nights: The Estonian National Opera House! There were two dance floors: the lofty main room was for salsa - it was spacious and in my opinion one of the most beautiful party spaces I've seen at dance festivals. But very very hot! Despite the heat I had a really fun time dancing there. The bar had lots of very reasonably priced drinks so the crowd was well served.

Practice makes perfect - myths & theories about becoming an advanced dancer

The right genes, starting at an early age, dedication, motivation, passion, 1000+ hours of practice, great teachers, natural talent, exceptional physique, unlimited amount of money... What is it that makes a person into a truly great dancer?

I have collected here some theories and tips from various articles & studies, plus some my own thoughts about the path to become an advanced dancer in social / partner dancing. If you're just starting to dance you may also look at my piece about how to become a zouk dancer for beginner dancers!

What is an advanced dancer? And how to become one?

Newsflash: there is no one way to become an advanced dancer. We all know it's very individual - some advance from a complete beginner in a couple years and for some, few people though, it (seems like) could be an unachievable goal. On the other hand for some dancing is just a way to pass time and meet people; advancing in it makes no difference. For a passionate beginner dancer becoming advanced though can be a matter a life and death. The advanced dancers are admired, envied and even feared... are they human at all? And how fast can I become one? Read more about the myths of advanced dancers by Rebecca Brightly.

Veronica Toumanova writes in her note about advanced tango dancers but her thoughts are equally valid in any partner dancing. She thinks that to become an advanced dancer takes a lot of work and dedication - practicing, taking classes and going out dancing. Advanced dancer is described as a person who is musical, has a good understanding of the dance vocabulary and technique, can improvise as well as knows how to improve him/herself. In addition to all that, an advanced dancer has a personal style. S/he doesn't need or wish to be a copy of another advanced dancer but finds a form of expression that is truly their own.

Zouk in Japan - the surprising latin & Brazilian dance hub!

Believe it or not, you can do lots of latin dancing in Japan, even zouk! And not just in Tokyo but in various locations in the country. I was excited to visit some other cities beyond Tokyo in my quest to find out how is Japanese zouk and extended my time in Japan a couple days just for that :) Tokyo dance scene information follows right below, scroll down for Osaka and Kyoto!

Burning the floor in Tokyo

I didn't know anything about the Japanese zouk scene but am lucky to have friends around the world who used their contacts to find some places and parties for me! There are in fact a few monthly zouk events where the local dancers gather up. I was in town for the “first Saturday of the month” party, also know as Utage zouk, ar the G-Box dance studio in Ebisu. I arrived there on time, at 8.30pm when the party started. There wasn't a whole lot of people then but soon enough the place filled up and was packed with 30 or more dancers from about 9.30pm onwards!

Zouk in Brisbane! And the story about how I got doudouleyd...

If you want to dance zouk in Australia Brisbane is the place to go. During my week in Brisbane I had lots of time to go check out the latin dance scene - obviously I focused on the zouk socials and classes since this was the zouk capital of this side of the world! There's something going on every night, either classes or parties; or both. If you're more interested in parties it's best to be in town for the weekend. There's also great latin and zouk congresses in Brisbane and the area - scroll to the bottom of the post (after the full listing of the weekly zouk classes & socials) for more info on the events!


Party time! Let's burnnnn the floor!!

I arrived to Brisbane on a Friday afternoon, just in time for my first party at Rio Rhythmics. On Fridays they have zouk party or a mixed latin night with zouk, salsa, bachata and samba. The week I was there it was the latter but they were playing mainly zouk (definitely my kind of a mixed night!). The studio is quite big but it does fill up. It wasn’t hard to find good zouk dancers and I had a very busy night on the dance floor!

The weekends are packed with parties for zouk dancers, there are commonly several options. It does vary depending on what week you’re there since all parties do not run every week. I was lucky to be there on Brazilian Soul Dance’s monthly Saturday night Zouk Fever. It doesn’t go on very late (7-11pm) but there are heaps of great dancers – and if you want to check out another party in the same night the early finish makes that possible. The studio feels even bigger than the one at Rio Rhythmics. I was on fire that night and practically had to hide in the bathroom to have a little break :D I did enjoy it a lot and my feet were shattered by the end of it. There was also a show that night by the Raw Connection West Coast Swing group. The WCS dancers stayed to watch the zouk social after their performance and many of them got bitten by the zouk bug, I taught a couple of eager guys the basics!

Sundays there are a couple options as well: Casablanca for salsa & zouk and some weeks Rio Rhythmics hosts a Brazil Beatz night (every 2nd Sunday of the month). I rested my first Sunday in Brisbane and went to check out the Casablanca’s salsa & zouk night on my second Sunday there. They have two dance floors with salsa & bachata on the main floor downstairs and zouk on the smaller space upstairs. I was running between both floors as that week there were special salsa guests (Vito and Stefania from Italy) and I wanted to catch their show and a few dances with the top salseros and bachateros as well. There weren't that many zouk dancers actually that night but had great dances, at one point I even shared one dance with four different zoukeros. Thanks boys for that!

On Mondays and Tuesdays there are no zouk socials at the moment but again on Wednesday there was another Casablanca party. That week it was held at Brazilian Touch in the Valley due to another booking at Casablanca. There were a little less people there than at the socials during the weekend - on Friday and Saturday I'd say there were up to 100 dancers or even more, Sunday around 60 and Wednesday around 40. But a good night nonetheless!

Thursdays you can take a little break from zouk: If you dance salsa the one place I would definitely recommend is Cloudland at 641 Ann Street in Fortitude Valley. Free entry and the night I was there even free mojitos (I'm not kidding!). The decor is very cool with a big dining area on two floors, a long bar, dance floor (with annoying surface unfortunately) - and live bands!

Cloudlands - coolest salsa club on my trip!

Enjoying the Sydney latin scene

Sydney is quite a good spot for us latin dancers and I had 10 days to check it out. The city is not known for its zouk scene (Brisbane is the Australian zouk capital) though you’ll find zoukers and some socials & parties there. But for salseros and bachateros there’s a lot of things happening, something every day of the week.

I happened to be in town for the Sydney International Bachata Festival! I didn’t want to tie myself to the festival schedule so I just decided to join a couple of the parties. First it was the pre-party at the Mediterranean restaurant on Oxford Street - cool location. When I walked in a zouk song was playing but only a few couples were on the dance floor. No reason to worry though, soon the floor was packed! They played mostly bachata with a couple salsas and zouks in between. I was happy I found some really good zouk dancers later on in the evening. And obviously tons of amazing bachateros. I had never danced bachata on that level before or Dominican style bachata ever!

New horizons: the start of my New Zealand adventures in Auckland

It was one of those long nights. But one I had been waiting for a while: my flight from Santiago to Auckland. I had come to the end of my four months in Latin America... Four months... it had passed so fast. As I packed my bags once again I was feeling quite happy since I had grown a bit tired of the cold, damp & dirty gringo trail through Bolivia, Peru and Chile. In any case it was a big milestone for me, leaving South America in one piece after all the adventures that I braved all by myself. I had so many fond memories and made so many fantastic friends, and I knew that I'd be coming back for sure... But now, it was time to move on!

My flight would be leaving around midnight so I had plenty of time to get all my things together – and to get thoroughly bored. I had come up with lots of things to do to kill time but having already spent an  hour or two at the airport and then finding out that our flight was 1h 40min delayed didn't make me particularly happy! Thankfully had some movies on my notebook for just these kinds of occasions :)

The 13-hour ride over the Pacific was quite uneventful: I watched some movies and tv-shows, had dinner and breakfast and in between tried to get some sleep. I have to say that after the very comfortable sleeper buses all over South America I was struggling in the tiny plane seats to find any kind of position that would put me to sleep. But the hours flew by and the service was good - and suddenly it was already time to land. I lost one day in the process though: that’s the bad part about traveling across the globe westwards. Though those are the hours that I am gaining throughout the trip, crossing all the time zones – I just have to give them away all at once.

So jumping from Chile to New Zealand (and straight from Wednesday to Friday) I arrived to Auckland before 6am. I’d booked a hostel for the night before so I could crash straight to bed once I got there. I was feeling very disoriented – getting some sleep was about all I could think about doing. I got up at around noon to go look for some breakfast. It was Good Friday so almost everything was closed but luckily there were a couple nice cafés close to my place on Parnell Street. I was so happy to finally have some “normal” food!! I had trouble deciding what to eat, everything sounded delicious.

Zouking up Auckland!

My weekend in Auckland was packed with dancing. Even though it was Easter and the city itself was practically deserted I had managed to come at a perfect time: there was a dance festival in town! The Jambalaya festival was not exactly just a dance festival but they offered a whole range of open level dance classes and there was a great couple from Belo Horizonte, Rodgrido Delano & Adriana Coutinho, teaching zouk. And there were zouk parties on three nights! 

I'd been in touch with some of the local dancers on Facebook and right on the first day I had planned to go to the first zouk party at the festival. One helpful girl, Dunya, had even offered me a ride so all I had to do was to get myself out of bed and dressed! Despite all my efforts I was pretty tired that night. Well, it was my first night on this side of the world, and after crossing 9 time zones I was "a little bit" off. I didn't dance too much, just a couple songs here or there but it was nice to be out and see people. We left the party fairly early - after all there were workshop we planned to attend the next morning!

On Saturday I joined the festival for the entire day, there were all kinds of dance workshops (tango, belly dancing, salsa, samba, swing dancing, reggaeton and zouk for example). All workshops were open level so they were mainly teaching beginner level stuff. On the Rodrigo & Adriana's zouk workshop I had the chance to take part as a leader for the first time - that was surprisingly fun! And I got some good feedback on my leading so maybe I'll dare to try it again some time :) I enjoyed being on classes and dancing even though it was all very basic but it never hurts to go over some fundamentals every now and then.

Salsa class by Jamie Jesus

Roda at the end of the zouk immersion workshop by Rodrigo (centre) and Adriana)

The bohemian "paradise valley" is no paradise - the rough Valparaíso

So after one night and two relaxing (boring) days in La Serena I was already ready to move on. I anyway needed to get a bit more south, towards Santiago. 7 hours south of La Serena was the Unesco Heritage site Valparaíso, just an hour and a half from Santiago, on the coast. I thought I might find more things to do there. I left La Serena on the last evening bus that was supposed to leave at 0.30am - but lucky us, our bus didn’t get to the bus terminal until 1.10am. I got settled in my seat and passed out within an instance. At around 7am I was already awake, worried that I’d miss my stop – though this time it was actually the final stop of the bus. At about 8am we were in Valparaíso.

I had booked two nights in a really lovely hostel quite close to the Valpo (=Valparaíso) bus terminal – at this point I had one week to go before my flight was leaving on the following Wednesday from Santiago to Auckland. I was quite happy to have made it this close well on time for the big flight. No need to hurry anymore! No more nightbuses! I was thinking if I should move to Santiago for the weekend but it turned out the whole city was booked: there was the Lollapalooza music festival on Saturday and a marathon on Sunday. The earliest I could find a nice hostel in Santiago was for Sunday so I figured I might as well stay the two extra days in Valpo and just get some rest, and maybe do some arrangements for the coming New Zealand leg of the trip. I definitely was desperate for some rest and quality sleep after spending three nights in the bus during the past week and god-know-how-many way too early wake ups in Perú before that.

Now I had four days to spend in Valpo... Doing, what? How about sleeping.. Eating… Sampling some Chilean wines. That sounded like a plan! I was happy to notice there were two big supermarkets quite close to the hostel so I went and stocked the fridge with groceries and cooked some nice Mexican food. I also took my clothes to the laundry and hand-washed all my wool clothes. I looked up what to do in New Zealand and got in touch with the Kiwi zoukers. And for the rest, yes, I slept a lot!

I realised this was also as good time as any to join a walking tour of the city since it looked like I wasn’t motivated enough to do any sightseeing on my own. There was a highly recommended “tours for tips” walking tour that leaves every day at 10am and 3pm from Plaza Sotomayor. When I went to the tour meeting point I was expecting there to be a couple people, if even that, considering they do 14 tours every week... I was a bit skeptical how they manage to fill them up even in low season. But no worries about that, we were about 25 people on the tour. Our guide Al was a really funny American-Chilean guy who guided us around for a bit over three hours – one of the best guides I’ve come across on this trip! (And I can tell you he made a pretty handsome three hours salary just from the tips!!)

Harbour with lanchas (around 1500 pesos for a 25min tour on the boat)

The different styles of architecture mark the various momentous rises and falls in the town's history

The elevators to the hills, Cerros

Week of a dancing girl in Helsinki

Monday: Great way to start the week is by trying out the new gym's latin dance class. The one I tried included some chachacha and salsa choreography - and was suprisingly interesting and fun! Have to do that again!

Tuesday: Normal zouk social and technique & acrobatics practica -day. Ok, acrobatics is not normal in zouk, just normal to our "let's see how high we can get the ladies" zouk people!