Your best social dancing experiences - Poll results

This is the start of the “Poll of the month” blog post series!

For a long time I've wanted to hear more of your thoughts so I when I opened this new website I also posted the first Poll of the month. And I was feeling quite brave right from the start - I set out on a quest to get dancers to share their best social dancing experiences. I asked you to tell where you had your best social dancing experience and what made this the best.

Those are some tough questions, I know. 'Social dancing experience' is not something you can quantify. It can be a fleeting moment on the dance floor - or a lasting memory. But even if it's a lasting memory, it's rarely something you write down, or compare with other experiences. Or do you ever make notes, such as, “I give this dance 76/100 points.” I hope not!

It felt like those were also pretty private questions - do you really want to share your very personal experiences, I wondered? And it did indeed feel like you were shy to give me your replies. But I was curious and undeterred: I wanted your stories. In this post I spill the beans. Here are your best replies and my best social dancing experiences!

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.

Zouk music - your guide to artists and playlists

Updated Nov 11 2014 with second playlist and new music links!

I often get questions about zouk music... Us dancers love to get new music as much as we can. Even though our music collections can already have hundreds or thousands of tracks we keep looking for something new & exciting. I'm a passionate consumer of zouk music myself and look up new music every week so I thought I would offer you my zouk playlist! See & subscribe to the Dance the World Youtube channel for more playlists!

These playlists have some of my favourite tracks from the past couple years, including all kinds of music that have a tempo & beat suitable for dancing Brazilian zouk. I tend to prefer upbeat music but you'll find ballads, melodic tunes and lounge music on the list. And if you like R'n'B, hiphop, dubstep or kizomba there's plenty of that too - all zoukable tracks of course.

Where else to find zouk music?

Like you may have noticed from my playlists above many pop artists have zoukable music: Rihanna, Jason Derulo, Usher, Ne-yo, Justin Timberlake, Mariah Carey, Leona Lewis, Madonna, Michael Jackson,... But there are lots of artists creating zouk music and DJs producing zouk / zoukable remixes specifically for us dancers. Remember that these talented artists do a lot of work to cater our "small" dance communities so please support the artists and buy music from them! Below you'll find a fairly comprehensive list of good music sources to keep an eye on.

The soundtrack of a lambazouker - early 2013 edition

Before I get into my report on the Berg's Congress 2013 I'd like to share my Porto Seguro playlist. I've been collecting the most memorable and most played songs of the past January's Berg's Congress and also music from São Paulo zouk dance floors during that time. Here's the link to the playlist on Youtube!