Brazil 2015 zouk playlist

Soon in the blog: all about my trip to Brazil last month: Rio de Janeiro, Porto Seguro & Berg's Congress 2015, Itacaré, Salvador and São Paulo!

But before that: latest & hottest zouk tracks in Brazil right now! Below are the most memorable and most played songs from 2015 Berg's Congress and São Paulo dance floors during this January - featuring lots of great new zouk, kizomba and other zoukable tracks, as well as some classics you'll hear at the clubs in Brazil right now.

A ready playlist for you? Of course! I collected all the songs I could find on this Youtube playlist!

How to improve your musicality? 6 exercises for dancers

This is a sequel to Getting a grip with musicality - the most vague and insightful part of dancing.

There I discussed about musicality in dancing, how to define it, the theories involved in general, in zouk and in leading and following as well as what musicality means to me.

From theory to practice - how can you improve your musicality? 

“And if the music's good, you dance."

- Unknown

See my zouk music playlists

Perhaps you've taken a musicality workshop with your dance teacher or at a congress, and you have already an idea how to work on your musicality (I fully recommend taking workshops and private classes!). But there's plenty of exercises you can do on your own, and this will allow really to dig into details and work at your own pace. Below a collection of exercises that will flex your musical muscles! I hope you'll find these tools useful - I've worked with a variation and combination of these over the years and I feel they've helped me.

NB: If you're worried about wearing out your favourite song in the exercises below then by all means pick song that is not your most loved tune. I wouldn't worry though; the song may wear out for a while as you do this, but you will get more kick out the exercises with a song you really enjoy and will probably in the end love it even more. And after intensive listening sessions you can take a little break from that song and it'll be sure to regain its power.


Ok, lets get to work!!

Getting a grip with musicality - the most vague and insightful part of dancing

Musicality is to me one of the most important aspects of dancing. The best dance partners are gifted in many respects; technique, style, connection and they are overall great people. Musicality is one important trait among those, it helps an otherwise good dancer rise to an extraordinary dancer. And for me it's the thing that makes the magic happen on the dance floor.

In the words of ballet teacher Deborah Wingert. “Musical dancers don’t just turn until they stop. They turn until they have to move on to the next point in the music. Musical dancers never get so caught up in steps that they ignore the music.”

Theories on musicality

Musicality - no matter how important it is to me - is something that I've always struggled to really explain or quantify. Even some of the definitions I've come across are extremely vague, such as this by choreographer Wade Robson: “Musicality is understanding music on a technical level, and then dropping all of that knowledge so you can sit deep inside the music. It’s dancing inside the music, as opposed to floating on top of it.”

Well, how is dancing "inside" the music more musical than "floating" on it?? Or if your dance teacher tells you to increase pace or make a movement bigger it is usually quite clear, but if he or she would tell you to increase musicality, what do you do?

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!