Current State Of Mind

‍Hello hello! It’s been a really long time since I’ve sent out a newsletter on this and I’m sorry for the abrupt absence. Life has been complex over the past few months with having a find a new place, a family health emergency (my dad had a stroke), and some challenges with organizing the Neokiz festival with new hotel management.

I won’t get into all the details here but it was all challenging, frustrating, annoying, discouraging, and whatever word feels appropriate to also add here, but I survived thanks to some close friends who were there to support me.Things are settling down a bit and I’m feeling back to my old self as far as content creation at least hence the reboot on this email newsletter!

In urbankiz news, I’ve now hosted 3 total Urbankiz Jack & Jill (J&J) competitions (1 in 2019, and 2 this year) and they have gone super well! You can check out the page I shared to keep track of the results so far.

For those of you who dance West Coast Swing or Brazilian Zouk you’ve probably seen 10s or 100s or J&Js already, and are well aware of their awesomeness!

I’m excited at the potential of this style of competition to grow more in the urbankiz scene throughout the U.S. and internationally.

The dance event side project I mentioned in my previous newsletter is also "alive and breathing" in beta mode! We actually have some live events there already, check it out and I’m open to any feedback or ideas that you have!

Also as I was writing this Laura Riva wrote a pretty awesome blog on what organizers (like her) look for when hiring artists and it’s definitely worth the share!

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‍Song I'm Currently Jamming To

‍‍Akanadja by Neyna, I wonder what akanadja means...

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‍Recent Content‍

• A kiz dictionary to help people understand a lot of common terminology around kizomba.
• A podcast that is interviewing Jurcic from Montreal!
• A lot of coding work has gone into where we are now live in beta and are starting to grow our list of events at Wheretofuckingdance.com!
• A post explaining a bit of urbankiz J&J terminology and the use of the word "champion".
• I created a page on my site that has the Urbankiz J&J results for the 3 J&Js that I've done so far!

Cool Video I'm Watching

‍This video was pretty enlightening going into the overuse of the supertonic in today's pop music by Andrew Huang. Seeing him nerd out on music was very inspiring for me to continue to create content around dance.

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Photo Of The Week

‍Syrita assisted me with my rectangles saida class at the Boston Kizomba Festival, and she did her first festival demo with me! She's been putting some work into private lessons with me and it's starting to pay off! Stay tuned for the demo!

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‍Upcoming Travel

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2022

9/23: DJing at Noche De Sentimiento - San Antonio, TX

10/27-31: Teaching & DJing at Bailame Dance Festival - Minneapolis, MN

12/2-5: Attending Elevation Zouk Festval - Denver, CO

12/16-18: Neokiz Weekender in Denver, CO

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2023

1/13-16: Teaching & DJing at the Interfusion Festival - Arlington, VA

2/3-6: Teaching & DJing for Kizouk Fusion Event - Denver, CO

2/23-27: Salsa In Hawaii Festival

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Event details can be found here. Let me know if you'd like to set up a Neokiz Weekender in your city!

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‍Question Of The Week

‍Are Jack & Jill competitions viable in the urbankiz dance scene? Why or why not?

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‍Dope Dance Resources

• A cool project to create a global directory of dance events.
• Find out how your can thrive at your next dance event with the Ultimate Dance Event Survival Kit.
• Find out how you can organize your dance journey with the Dancer’s Training Journal.

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‍Past Newsletters

‍You can view past newsletters here.

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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.