ZoukNerds • Learn | Build | Belong

"Those are my students." Something I absolutely don't like is when people in a Brazilian Zouk community say that, and not like "Oh, these are my students, please meet them." I mean in the sense that they own those people and you cannot touch them. This one's for the teacher who moved to a new city, or the student who wants to start a beginner class or a práctica in the...

Community leaders tell Gui and me they can't grow their Brazilian Zouk scene because they're busy pleasing the people with power, some bosses, some mafia people. I don't think you need to. I think you need to please the dancers. This one's for anyone trying to start Brazilian Zouk in a city where nobody dances it yet, and getting told what they're allowed to do. I learned it tw...

I apologised at the top of this one, because I know what the word does to people. "Fix your frame, your frame doesn't work, your frame is this, your frame is that." Nobody tells you which part of your body they mean. In Brazilian Zouk we use frame as an umbrella word for a pile of separate things, and then we correct people with it. This one is for anybody who has been told to fix th...

We put two people on the floor at a Brazilian Zouk teacher training and asked the room one question. These two are complete beginners, what do you fix first? Somebody said the timing, somebody said the posture, and then somebody said the torsion, so I had to stop everyone. "Hold on, slow down, torsion, who is that?" Like, is it food? At that point that word does not exist yet. If you&#39...

I danced with someone I'd followed online for years, walked off the floor, and went to a dark corner to question every decision I'd ever made in my life. They're one of the best Brazilian Zouk dancers in the world, the dance was terrible, and like most of us do, I blamed myself. If you've ever come off a dance with somebody you admire and quietly decided the problem was you, this o...

"I don't know what to do. My students don't wanna learn the foundations. Please help me." An organizer said that to me years ago, and it is the most common thing I hear in Brazilian Zouk. This one is for teachers and organizers who have said out loud that their students do not want the basics. That night I went to the social. Acrobatics everywhere, every head movement, not one Vi...

Lambada is like the sun, you know? It spreads the brightness and the energy to everyone around. And I'm sorry to say this, but sometimes, in some places, Brazilian Zouk can be like a black hole. Vanessa didn't even let me finish. "You just get in." Yeah. You get in, you get sucked in, and everything else disappears. It's my dance, and I say it with love. If you've danced...

"I don't believe this person, they can really follow what this guy wants. I think they are guessing." That's Vanessa on why she started Brazilian Zouk, after fifteen years of ballet, jazz and contemporary. If you have a job you like and a dance you love, and you keep running the numbers at two in the morning, this one is for you. Iago was teaching mathematics in Campinas when Nin...

"Hell yes, hell yes." That's my answer every time someone in the group asks whether teachers hit plateaus too, and I teach Brazilian Zouk for a living. Ours just hides better. I can teach all week, feel completely fulfilled, and then meet Christina after three months apart and find that the things we could do together suddenly need thinking about again. Gui said it cleaner than I did...

For years the DJ would put on traditional old school Brazilian Zouk and I'd walk off the floor. "Ah, I don't like that type of music, I'm gonna take a break." That was a lie. I didn't have the skills to enjoy it yet, and the day I learned them I loved it. So when Gui tells me he got so picky only two or three followers could give him a good dance, down to where their head...

"I know, I've done this already." Every Brazilian Zouk teacher hears that in privates, and I ask the same thing back. "Okay, you've done it. But do you know it?" "Oh no, yeah, I know." "Do you know? Because if you knew, we wouldn't be correcting this." Then Gui told me the one that stuck. Hours of privates on Lambada, learned so much, never pract...

Why do you dance like you're competing? Because Brazilian Zouk is one dance living as five: the social dance, the performance, the competition, the after-class demo, and the teaching dance. In this ZoukNerds episode, Gui Prada and I name all five, and what happens when you train one while wanting another. Gui saw it in a private lesson in Australia. A follower past 65 told him, "I am danc...

Why did you leave that amazing Brazilian Zouk class confused? Because the teacher was serving three meals at once. Every dance class teaches one of three things: mechanics, concepts, or feeling. When nobody names the main one, you learn a nice move and walk out not knowing what the class was about. In this ZoukNerds episode, Gui Prada and I talk about how teachers build classes, why most of us def...

How does a dance school become your safe space? Before Brazilian Zouk, before teaching, Gui Prada and I were two shy kids who found one safe room. In this ZoukNerds episode, we thank the first teachers who built us, and I tell a story nobody has ever heard. Not even my family. Brazil, 1999. I was around 10. A community center near my house had dance classes, and my parents couldn't afford them...

What's the difference between a Brazilian Zouk retreat and a Zouk festival? In this ZoukNerds episode, Gui Prada and I go down memory lane to the events that marked us, and they could not be more opposite. Gui's first Brazilian Zouk event ever was Xandy Liberato's first retreat, in Valencia, 2016. Invitation only. On arrival day, the exercise was simple: look your partner in the eye, o...

Is Brazilian Zouk a spiritual dance? Do you have to be spiritual to dance it? In this ZoukNerds episode, Gui Prada and I take the "too hippie" stereotype apart. The complaint: too spiritual, too much eye contact, whale music. So I asked the Buddha himself, Gui Prada, to define it. His definition: anything you do that connects you to meaning, to purpose, to something larger than yourself....

Why is the festival you bought never the event you get? Because most Brazilian Zouk festivals are designed from the fear of not being able to pay for them. Gui Prada and I open the organizer's books. I'll put my hands up first. I've lost money on BraZouky Festivals. Some years we didn't pay the bills. We take from here, go from there, we do some magic. And we still never sold a day...

Is Brazilian Zouk an addiction? I think for a lot of us it is — and I say that as someone it nearly broke. In this ZoukNerds episode my co-host Gui Prada and I talk about the body of the dancer. The strapped knee, the strapped shoulder, the wrist, the people massaging each other at every festival. That is the community telling on itself. For 10 years I ate painkillers as if I was drinking water. I...

I'll put my hands up here. A lot of the time, dancing Brazilian Zouk, I'm just listening to the tum, ta, chick and going for it. "Oh, good BPM, I can dance to this." That's autopilot, dancing to the sound of the machine, and it's most of what we call musicality: hitting the structure, the ones, the fives. There are whole layers under that we're not touching. Gui was t...

Where are the Brazilians in Brazilian Zouk? Gui Prada went looking in Sydney and found them at the Forró social, not at our Zouk Social. Gui was three weeks in Sydney, dancing Zouk every Friday, missing what he calls the squeeze, not a hug, a squeeze. Then somebody took him to the Forró social, and in the waiting area all he could hear was Portuguese, Portuguese, Portuguese. A small branch of Braz...

I'll be honest. I walk into a social and I pick who to dance with in about three seconds, and most of the time I don't even decide it. My body decides for me. In this episode of Brazilian Zouk podcast ZoukNerds, Gui Prada and I pull apart that decision nobody talks about: the hidden social hierarchy I see in every dance community, including the ones I run. Why does everyone sit in the same...

Brazilian Zouk costs me sleep. I'm in Taiwan right now and I've finally built a schedule that lets me rest. The rest of the year? Time zones, late socials, weekends that bleed into the next week. 23 years in and I still pay for it every Monday. In this Q&A episode, Gui Prada and I read Veronique Dupont's question from our ZoukNerds Facebook Group: what is the ONE biggest benefit of...

Brazilian Zouk has a leader shortage problem at every social — and no organizer has solved it, including me. I've run BraZouky with strict ratio control for years. Some years we hit 1.1 to 1 at sign-up. The social still tilts the same way every night. In this Q&A episode, Gui Prada and I read Billy Lou's question from our ZoukNerds Facebook Group. He's in a leadership course and as...

Most Brazilian Zouk scenes don't need more socials. They need more Practicas. And the reason most Practicas fail comes down to the DJ: songs that don't end. In this Q&A episode, Gui Prada and I read a question from Star Bolton in our ZoukNerds Facebook Group. Her school changed their practice time from a Spotify playlist to a DJ set list. Followers started going home without dancing. I...

What If Your Teacher’s Style Isn't For You? Ever taken a class and thought, "Man, this technique just doesn't feel right for my body" ? Gui and I are hanging out in Taiwan to tackle an awesome question from Emily in our Facebook group! Emily asks: "How would you feel if a student said, 'I know you teach it this way, but I'm sticking with my own way'?" The Sh...