Current State Of Mind

Good morning from Minneapolis, MN! I'm passing through this city to visit some friends before heading to teach some workshops in Des Moines, IA.

Since my last email I taught my first Urbankizouk class in Chicago as part of my Neokiz Weekender in Chicago. It was a small class and most of the people that showed up for the class were already zoukers. So all in all, it felt more like a "how to add kizomba and urban kiz moves to your basic zouk steps". I found that I focused a lot on how to make clear transition points with actual urban kiz steps and Brazilian zouk steps. I'll be teaching another Urbankizouk class in Phoenix with the local BZ instructors there, so I'm excited to dive into this topic more!

I'm also been curious to explore the histories of BZ and UK. It seems that there are similarities and differences between Angola sEmba, and Brazilian sAmba. Angola and Brazil were both colonies of Portugal, and thus the official language of both are Portuguese.

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Song I'm Currently Jamming To

I found this jam on my Discover Weekly playlist on Spotify.

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Recent Content

I wrote a blog about my experiences of organizing and attending dance events over the past few months into 5 ways I feel it's possible to reduce the risks of COVID.

I've put together a list of recommended tools, products, and resources to survive and thrive at your next dance event!

I also posted an image explaining 3 things that will make any dance instructor proud.

I posted a piece of content comparing the belly bump found in Brazil's Umbigada & Angola's Rebita.

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Cool Video I'm Watching

This was a cool video of a hologram technology with "solid light".

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Upcoming Travel

2021

10/16: Neokiz Workshops - Des Moines, IA

10/22-24: Neokiz Weekender - Phoenix, AZ

10/29-31: Neokiz Weekender - Denver, CO

11/5-8: Blocked for Content Creation - Austin, TX

11/12-14: Neokiz Weekender Round 2 - San Francisco, CA

11/19-25: Blocked for Content Creation - Austin, TX

12/3-5: Attending Elevation Zouk Festval - Denver, CO

12/10-12: Euroson Festival - Cancun, MX

12/17-19: The Zouk Challenge Weekender - Dallas, TX
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2022

1/13-17: Attending Interfusion Festival - Arlington, VA

1/21-24: UKF Congress - São Paolo, Brazil

1/24-28: Visiting Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2/4-6: Neokiz Weekender - Buenos Aires, Argentina

2/11-14: Neokiz Weekender - Santiago, Chile

2/18-21: Neokiz Weekender - Medellin, Colombia

Event details can be found here. If you'd like to setup a Neokiz Weekender in your city, let me know!

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Photo Of The Week

Question Of The Week

Do you feel the dance community at large respects professionalism more or popularity/hype?

Past Newsletters

You can view past newsletters here.

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.

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