Helsinki Zouk & Samba Festival.

Wow, last weekend was so amazing. I went to the third Brazilian Zouk & Samba Festival in Finland and the event made me, if possible, even more addicted to this flowing dance. Now I cannot even wait the next time I can go zouking and I am already planning to attend some Zouk Congress somewhere in Europe. I have also been thinking if I should concentrate on Zouk more after I am done with Spex showings. Now I am doing lots of different dances, and even though they support each other, it would be great to know one dance really well.

I feel like I learned so much during the dance classes. First of all, I noticed that I have been going some basic things really wrong. During the classes I was able to fix some of those but when I went to the parties and just had fun dancing I easily slipped back to my old bad habits. Now I have a dozen things in my mind that I want to go through with JV in our coming practices. What made the classes superb were our international teachers Freddy and Andressa who were so inspirational, fun, motivating and talented teachers and dancers. I could have watched their dancing for hours, wow!

Even though I registered as an intermediate/advanced, it was a good decision to attend beginner class on Friday evening. We mostly practiced the basic movement and rhythm that is crucial to any figures in Zouk. I really enjoyed the class and it gave me lots. I liked the way the class was structured because after the class those who really were beginners were already able to go dancing in the Friday evening's party. The party was great and hot, but I had to go home early because my lower back started to hurt. I was quite worried about the pain but fortunately my back felt good the next morning.

Saturday we had three intermediate and advances Zouk classes and a beginner Samba class. In Zouk classes Freddy and Andressa taught us lots of different figures. I liked that the figures were taught really detailed, so even though some of them were complicated everybody were able to learn all of them. Unfortunately my camera is broken so I cannot post videos about the figures here (if I get someone else's videos, I'll post them later). Samba de Gafieira was a totally new dance for me, and it is so different to competition Samba, so I am glad the classes started with the very basics. Saturday ended with the best Zouk party I've ever been. I was in a Zouk flow for hours! Amazing feeling and memorable dancing. What made me happy was a comment from an experienced Zouk dancer with who I danced couple of songs. He said I was an exceptional dancer and that I could become really good in Zouk if I wanted to. And oh yes, I do want to.

[Edit:] Here is Freddy and Andressa's musicality demo during which they also make most of the figures we learned:

Sunday finished the festival with two Zouk and two Samba classes. Again I learned a lot new things. I must admit that the last class was maybe a bit too much for me already because I found myself unable to concentrate on my steps and following. Tired but happy, that describes my feelings after the festival. I was right before: I would have missed a lot if I didn't go there. Thank you everybody for making my weekend special.