Current State Of Mind

Hello beautiful humans!

Apologies for the later send, had a busy day and a busier weekend. My phone was starting to lag alot and I was on tech support with Apple then had to go to the Apple store then needed upgrade but they didn’t have the phone I wanted and then hours at the T-Mobile store because the phone was updating to the lastest iOS, and now we finally got an upgraded phone. Tech is amazing, but man at times it can be a time suck lol.

I’ve been in the urbankiz lab putting together an outline for several urbankiz courses. Current focus is a Hook Step Course. I’ve been wonder what to call it, “Hook Step Success”? Open to ideas from those readers who dabble in urbankiz!

The weather is starting to get colder and one of my favorite things to get when it starts to get cold is pho! I have a favorite place in town for Pho, it’s called Pho Please off of E. Riverside here in Austin. If you live in Austin or ever visit, I highly recommend this place, I know the owner and she’s a dope human!

In WCWD news, I’ve been trying to push for the feature of the recurring events and it has taken a while to build out, I can why companies like Eventbrite have teams of software developers. Here’s a video of some progress I’ve made so far. I’m open to feedback about potential questions and such. I will have build out the monthly recurring events differently. And as always, anyone can create a free account and add any dance event from local classes to international festivals!

I shared a picture of dance events and two Rubik’s cubes not to long ago and asked what they had in common. Here’s where my brain is right now, I’m thinking of the 6 sides of a cube and for each side is a different perspective of dance events:

1. Artists: For artists, their calendars shows the upcoming bookings and availability.
2. Organizers: For organizers, their calendars show the upcoming events they are organizing.
3. Dancers: Dancers, can showcase the events they are planning on attending, considering, and/or have attended.
4. Local City: Local cities can show their dance event calendars across all partner dances and types of dance events.
5. Event Types: Here a particular calendar could show all types of retreats, or intensives coming up.
6. Dance Styles: Imagine being able to view a global calendar for a particular dance style? It’s curently possible on WCWD but some of the data needs to get cleaned up with the recurring events.

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Currently in the dance world it seems FB events, none of this is possible filter events in this way we are needing at the moment. It really helps to plan ahead to be able to check and see what’s on the horizon. Feature by feature, bug by bug, little bits of progress are being made on WCWD with the vision of being able to view dance events from multiple angles in a clear way, like a solved Rubik’s cube.

In last weeks newsletter, I talked about feedback in our dancing in general and specifically in group classes (from local classes to festivals), this feedback of not just going through the motions of another partnerwork class. Did that spark any insights?

I wonder how often practicas are in our overall dance scenes? Are they most popular in the tango scenes? Do people not know they exist as an option? Not lucrative enough to sustain? Not enticing enough to “eat your vegetables” in dance to get better? Not enough skill around giving and receiving feedback? Open to thoughts!

Thanks for opening another newsletter! Enjoy the rest of your week!

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Song I'm Currently Jamming To

This one is a link of just one song, I happened to stumble across a IG carousel that was featuring Bollywood songs that were sampled into hip-hop songs, do you know which one was then sampled for an urbankiz track?

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Recent Content

• Tinkering with hook steps with Sarah - Part 3.
• A carousel on actively seeking out feedback in your dancing.
• An image of the communication channels in a dance class and the 42 channels being used with the timeframes of before, during, and after a dance class.
• An image showcasing the 6 lanes of kiz.
• An image showcasing permutations of innovation syncopations & also on the whiteboard.
• Showing possibilities of syncopation across an 8-count.
• A fun dance with Kinnera at the Boston Kizomba Festival.
• A video explaining diamond saidas with clockwise rotations.
• The 16-count phrase mapping worksheet is now available for download!

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Photo of the Week

I setup the banner I had at Neokiz in my living room for the upcoming content I have planned.

Dance Meme of the Week

This one definitely made me chuckle! Will definitely use this to help talk about the musicality course!

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Cool Video I'm Watching

Cool well edited video of 8 steps to unf*** your life.

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Upcoming Travel

2023

10/26-30: Bailame Dance Festival - Minneapolis, MN

11/3-5: Neokiz Weekender New York - Warwick, NY

11/17-20: Neokiz Intensives - Atlanta, GA

12/1-4: Attending Elevation Zouk Festival (Available for Privates) - Denver, CO

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2024

01/11-15: Attending Interfusion Festival (Available for Privates) - Arlington, VA

05/3-6: Neokiz Weekender in Edmonton - Edmonton, AB, Canada

05/17-20: Kizowna 2024 - Kelowna, BC, Canada

07/20-24: 8th Annual Neo Kizomba Festival - Austin, TX

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Question Of the Week

How do you determine what is good feedback? When do you welcome it? When has it been helpful? Who’s feedback are you open to hearing and when?

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Answer of the Week

How do I manage and keep track of all the content I create?

I use my 2nd brain to organize a lot of different areas in my life.

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Past Newsletters

You can view past newsletters here.

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‍Dope Dance Resources

• A cool project to create a global directory of dance events for dancers, artists, and organizers!
• Find out how you 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 1.0.
• Level up your kiz online with Mr. Neokiz!
• Learn more about the Ultimate Musicality Course For Dancers to level up your musicality!
• Get the 16-count phrase mapping worksheet download for free!
• Join me at my urbankiz festival in Austin, July 18-22, 2024!
• Check out my dance podcast!

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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.

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Charles

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