Kizomba Walk

I'm not able to dance much while I'm helping my folks out so I might as well write  ...

One of the first things I remember hearing when I first started learning kizomba was "just walk". Kizomba is a walking dance - relaxed, meandering, like you're walking and dragging your feet on the sand.

This description has stuck with me until this past year, after learning more about the dance and dancing with the different instructors and artists I've had the privilege of working with and learning from, there is more to this walk than meets the eye.

Just take a moment when you're seated by the window in a cafe and look at how people walk. We each hold within our bodies, things that have influenced our movement and it is reflected in the way we walk. Every step we take contains a clue to an influence on how our body moves. For example, someone who has a strong military influence may walk like a march. A ballet dancer may carry herself (or himself) a very specific way because of they way she (or he) has been conditioned to dance. Some people walk like penguins. Some people waddle like ducks. Some people walk with this bounce and swagger and so on.

So when someone says - just walk. It a loaded statement. When instructors say "just walk", they really mean "just walk like me" or in the case of kizomba "just walk like an African".

I felt it before I could see it: that sticky, grounded walk that goes so well with the base rhythm of kizomba. I couldn't quite put my finger on how to teach it, so I focused on grounding the walk. THIS I'm good at. Even from an early age, I loved to drag my feet and I would end up tripping over small bumps on a floor's surface. I describe the walk as languid but it should be like the step you take when you're lifting yourself up a flight of stairs - except you're not actually going up.

Confused? So try paying attention to what you do when you climb up stairs. First of all, you have to bend your knees and then you exert pressure on the foot as you lift yourself up to the next step. You don't lock your knees, you keep them relaxed and then do the same with the next foot on the next step.

Now imagine that you're NOT climbing, but instead, you're feet are heavy, like lead and you need to move them to walk. You would have to bend your knee before you can engage it to step and when you did move you're leg, the impact on the floor would be "heavy" and then your foot would stay longer on the floor before the next step because it was so heavy.

So there's the preparation - bending the knee, allowing your waist to stretch so that your shoulders are still level and your torso does not bend forward (or backward). Then as you lift and place that foot firmly on the ground, there's an edge to the initial impact and then your feet stay in contact with the floor as long as possible (like there's glue), weight on the front half of the foot and as you start to straighten that leg you never lock your knees as you shift all your weight over to that leg. Now the next leg is ready to take a step.

That's the best I can manage to describe the walk that has an edgy gooey yet grounded feel. When mastered, the movement is smooth and continuos so that the energy that you push down into the ground, returns up through the body in a wonderful wave - that's what I believe is sometimes referred to as "ginga".

Welcome December!

So we ended November with a BANG!

Following a stellar weekend of dancing at the Kizomba Seattle Exchange, the Seattle Salsa Congress had a dedicated Kizomba room (who-hoo!) and it also featured the debut of an original song "Body Language" from one of our very own Israel West (applause please).

Now we're in December and heading towards the end of 2013.

• Cellar's is open again for Monday night Kizomba / Salsa / Bachata mix with DJ Nick. Don't forget Monday practice nights are still going on at the Centennial Towers.
• Kizomba Seattle Meetup is now open for business for people that don't deal with facebook well and just want email notifications. Watch for a special event (Dinner and Dancing) that we'll be posting about soon. 
• December 6th is First Friday Kizomba night at West Hall with Dennis Richards teaching the drop in lesson and Mary Lyons spinning your tunes. Come and dance kizomba all night long. AND watch for a special event (Dinner and Dancing) that we'll be posting about soon. 
• Ring in the New Year with a Salsa/Kizomba dance hosted by TAM TAM Productions at Salsa N Seattle. 

Looking ahead to 2014, we've got a few things planned:

• Frances and Jay will be at the Latin Dance Festival in Reno to teach Kizomba - come and join us if you can. The schedule is still being finalized but there will be lost of kizomba dancing at night along with great lineup of salsa and bachata instructors. 
• Frances will be teaching a Kizomba Bootcamp at Salsa Con Todo on January 18-19, 2014
• Kizomba 2 will be starting up again at the Century Ballroom, check their website for details sometime in the second or third week in December. 
• In February 2014 Century Ballroom will be starting a second night of Kizomba on the third Fridays (whohoo!) it will be from 1100 pm to 2:00 am - stay tuned for more detail as it gets closer. 
• Another Kizomba Seattle Exchange (date TBD)
• Visits by some old friends and new ones perhaps some local weekend events and who knows what else? If you want to help out, have an idea or lead, please contact me by using kizombaseattle@gmail.com.

In the meantime, have a wonderful holiday season. HUGS and keep on spreading the kizomba love. 

Memorable Moments: Kizomba Seattle Exchange

Its been almost a week since the Kizomba Seattle Exchange and I am still enjoying moments I remember from the exchange and processing some learning and observations from the weekend. As I posted on one of my facebook updates, most of the time, weekends like this one leave a void within me because all this concentrated and fun activity is suddenly gone. This time however, perhaps its because this event focused on celebrating the Kizomba Seattle community, I am left with a sense of warmth and security, much like the feeling I have when I'm in a kizomba embrace.

Kizomba is growing. There are all sorts of events popping up in the US and we are beginning to see how much there is out there in Europe to participate in. Its easy to keep looking elsewhere for the next kizomba kick. What I wanted to do was focus on what we have here at home and perhaps plant a seed that other communities can celebrate the same way we did. Its not always about the next big festival (that's great too, don't get me wrong - its builds a different sense of community and allows access to instructors that you might not normally get a chance to learn from). Sometimes, its just about the people you have around you: dancers, studio owners, instructors and anyone else that's excited to be part of kizomba.

Here's what I observed through out the weekend, not in any particular order of importance:

Dancing a LOT makes a BIG difference, even for people that just learned the basic steps.

One of the things I loved about this weekend was the fact that there were people who participated with just an hour of kizomba experience, totally new to kizomba. What a pleasure to see that armed with simple basic steps they were able to enjoy the weekend and dance and improve. All of them came to at least one dance and most of them attended three or more of the seven dances and that made a difference in how they were dancing by the end of the weekend. Hurrah! I'm so happy and excited - it just proves what I already know: it doesn't take a lot to get started and fall in love with this dance.

Collective Dance Musicality
There is what I refer to as the collective dance musicality. Its that general flow on the dance floor and it best seen from the DJ booth or someplace apart from the dancing crowd. What I see when the dancers are in tune with the music, is that despite the different moves that are being danced, the general flow and energy in the room matches and moves together with the music. If the song is high energy and peppy, that is reflected in the quality of the movement on the dance floor and the collective of dancers. When we first started having kizomba dances, it was so new that the collective dancing on the floor looked a bit chaotic. This weekend it was a pleasure to see the collective dance musicality more aligned with the music. There were exceptions of course, we have a Zouk community that moves very differently to the dance than kizomba dancers do and there were some people that were so caught up in the expression of their movement that they sometimes didn't match the collective. All good things. The point is that there is less chaos and more fluidity and flow matching the music that plays - its pretty freakin' cool to see.

Great Music Inspires Great Dancing

I am not a DJ at heart. I don't have that music geek factor that makes me want to layout the canvas for dancers to dance on. I just want to dance. I do know that the quality of music makes a big difference and for any dance, being able to put down the right songs with enough variety to make it interesting and fun is not an easy task. I am amazed by the canvas laid out by the DJs from the weekend and am so thankful that we were able to invite a few from out of Seattle. Our local DJs were pivotal to getting the dances started so they laid the foundation for what Seattle dancers dance to. It was quite a treat to also experience the music that DJs outside of Seattle weave together. We all have different tastes and preferences but from what I saw of the dancing, it was like being led by the Pied Piper - you can't help but dance when you hear it.

Generosity and Community

I love my Kizomba family in Seattle and this weekend brought out so many of the qualities that make me feel so lucky to be part of it. They helped and welcomed folks from outside Seattle and total newbies. I've been to places where as a new person, its quite hard to get a dance and feel like part of the dance collective. I was so pleased to see everyone dancing with everyone. Some folks opened up their homes to host visitors, some offered their time to help with the event organization and logistics, some people donated their resources to add to the weekend. Everyone came out to dance and there were more people than I expeced with new ones getting hooked as the weekend progressed.

Beyond Expectaiions

80 people at the opening dance! That's the biggest turnout evern for a dance here in Seattle AND there were still a few people that were out of town or couldn't make it. When I put this weekend together I had no idea what to expect, just a lot of hope that there would be people to dance with for 20 hours. Instead, all the good will, good music, good dancing and great energy more than exceeded anything I could have imagined. It was what I was hoping for but didn't realy know could be acheived. Booyah!