Current State Of Mind

Hello from Austin! If you follow me on social media you might be aware that I was in Chicago for over week for the Future Zouk festival and I also hosted my own Neokiz workshops the following weekend. It was a great time at Future Zouk to level up some Brazilian Zouk skills and meet with some of my Brazilian Zouk friends. Even though I've been dancing kizomba for about 9 years now, it feels really humbling to struggle and fumble in the basic steps of another dance, but I'm here for the long run.

I also want to share that Future Zouk was a 300+ attendee event that as of my knowledge today, did not have any breakouts of COVID cases, this was achieved because of two COVID protocols, everyone had to be vaccinated and also provide a negative COVID test within 72 hours of the start of the event. This could be useful data for you all to help you and/or other organizers navigate starting to attend dance events again.

Another thing I mentioned in the first paragraph is that I hosted my own workshops in Chicago, I feel like this is very rarely seen even by veteran instructors that have decent followings that they have built over the years. It's a lot more common for an artist or couple to wait to be hired to be brought out to a city via an organizer. I totally get there's a whole set of logistics tied into that as well as far as travel times, securing lodging, venues, managing payments, promotion on the local level, local dance politics, etc. but there are times when it's definitely worthwhile.

For the workshops in Chicago, and also my upcoming travel, I was able to set up everything from the graphics and flyers for different social media platforms, the payments links, a unique page to drive attendees on my own hosted website (no Eventbrite or the like), a pre-workshop survey, and post-workshop survey, promo videos with IG reels, and also a way to track COVID vaccination status. This was a lot of work behind the scenes even before I got to lesson plan, but hopefully I have a system now that I can duplicate as I travel to more cities for weekenders, teaching at festivals isn't something I particularly interested in at the moment, but I'll leave that conversation for another email.

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Song I'm Currently Jamming To

I heard this song in one of my friends IG stories, and I was like this song is dope, l watched the music video and I was thoroughly shocked and impressed. Industry Baby

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Recent Content

I made a post on FB about the struggle of Urbakiz in the US.

I uploaded some old demos from when I was in Hawaii with Olga.'

I uploaded a practice video of Brazilian Zouk with Hannah.

I also wrote a blog about the argument of "this is a family dance" I've heard many times over the years.

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Cool Video I'm Watching

This is a really cool video produced by Discord.

I will also appreciate any tips or advice for getting my Discord server for Intellectual Dancers going.

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Upcoming Travel

9/12 - San Francisco, CA - Neokiz Workshops

9/18 - Portland, OR - Neokiz Weekender

10/22 - Phoenix, AZ - Neokiz Weekender

Event details can be found here.

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Question Of The Week

How can we educate newcomers (and even those of us who’ve been around a while) into these close-framed dances about the nuances of consent and the richness of the cultural histories without shaming human connection, touch, attraction, sensuality, or sexuality?

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Thanks for reading!

Thoughts and feedback on the newsletter or on anything covered within are always welcome, just hit reply. The thing I love most about writing this newsletter is follow-up interactions with readers.

Charles

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