Brazilian Zouk
Brazilian Zouk is a partner dance from Brazil. It is a young dance, developed from the Lambada of the 80's. It has only been in Europe now for about 20 years, and it is constantly growing and evolving. Traditionally, it was danced to Zouk music from the French Caribbean, but now it can be danced to a variety of music, including R&B, pop, hip hop, and Kizomba, which makes it very versatile. Brazilian Zouk is known for its flowing, expressive and sensual movements. It is a dance with focus on trust and connection between the dancers, which can be tactile (connecting through touch), visual (connecting by looking at one another) or both at the same time. Both closed and open embrace are used in the dance, and sometimes the dancers also dance without physical connection.
The history of the dance, and its development, is very important to Lina. She uses it to structure her classes and transfer to her students as much knowledge and understanding about the dance, its history and its culture, as possible. In her classes, Lina uses a mix of Brazilian and European didactics to ensure the best learning possibility for her students in Europe.
Lina stands for clean, simple, and elegant basics in connection. But why is this so important?
The diagram above is an illustration of Lina's way of structuring her classes, in order to teach her students to really dance. Many people first learn to dance with combinations, but Lina believes this limits the dancer's creativity and connection. Perfect execution of steps and figures is not dance, and it is certainly not an improvised partner dance.
- Connection and body awareness can exist without any other building blocks, and it will be safe and pleasant.
- Body awareness is an important skill for all styles of dance.
- Basics are best with great connection and a certain level of body awareness (clean basics).
- Musicality is useless without basics and connection.
- Creativity requires an understanding of the basics and a solid connection. It goes well with musicality.
- Techniques beyond the basics require that basics, body awareness, and connection are all in place. Upper body movements and more complicated techniques for leading and following require solid fundamentals for safety and comfort.
- Combinations are useless without all the other elements. They are useful only as inspiration for the advanced dancer who already has a thorough command of all the other building blocks.