DIZC & HZF 2014.

I have been trying to start writing this post for countless of times now. I feel like I have so much in my heart to share but somehow I can't put it to words in the way that I'd like to. I would like to write my feelings down as beautiful as they are inside of me and yet I feel that goal is impossible to achieve. After lingering with this post for more than a month, I decided that something is better than nothing, so here we go.

In the end of October I was fortunate to receive a huge amount of wonderful dancing memories in two really different dance festivals: Dutch International Zouk Congress and Helsinki Zouk Festival. During this intensive dancing period I noticed, even more, that the most beautiful ingredient of partner dancing is exactly those memories that are created together with my dance partners, my fellow dancers and my dance community. Having two intensive dance weekends in a row is definitely an exhausting experience especially if you want to do it the hard-core way - take every possible workshop, dance through the parties from the very beginning until the last song and in between socialize with your dancer friends - but it gives so much in return that somehow you just forget your tiredness, sore feet, the forthcoming work week and keep on dancing. Result: happiness that makes you, well, so speechless that it is hard to write anything down.

Having those two such a different festivals so close to each other gave a nice contrast to both of them. The Dutch congress was a huge event with up to thousand attendees, dozens of artists, packed dance floors (in two floors), live performances, variety of shows and too many great workshops to choose from. There were so many dancers you could loose your friends to the dance floor - no kidding! It was the place to be if you wanted to spend the weekend just dancing and exploring new dance connections. The party was like going to a big candy store; you didn't know which one to pick!

 

The Helsinki festival was pretty tiny against it, but the utmost warm atmosphere was breathtaking, the quality of performances was superb and the parties were one of the best I've ever attended. Maybe it was the quality over quantity that made it shine out so bright from one of the biggest European Zouk events. Really, by far my favorite dance event I have ever been to and I'm not the only one: see, for example, my fellow Zouk dancer's blog post about HZF.

In Helsinki festival I was also given some nice opportunities to experience another side of dance classes: being a dance teacher. Our Rio Zouk Style team gave beginners' classes on Friday to the festival attendees and we all were really happy with the experience. I had the privilege to teach with my own teacher, which of course made things easier for me since he knew exactly what to do in case I got lost. Everything went extremely well and I really liked teaching with him. I must admit, though, that I was pretty nervous; not really that much about the class itself but the dance demo in the end of it. Two days before I was actually crying in a tram and almost cancelling the whole demo because I felt I would just screw it up badly - we've just had a group practice and I happened to dance exceptionally bad that day. Luckily I didn't and neither did I fall down or screw up; I was actually very pleased with it. Yet another nice dance memory caught in tape.

In addition to the beginner classes, me and Ngirl instructed partner stretching & relaxation classes in the end of both workshop days. We took some elements from partner yoga classes we have been going together and set our goal as to calm down the participants after their hectic days. In the beginning it seemed a hard task but in the end both classes were extremely successful and many came to tell us how much they loved it. It felt so amazing to see everyone living in the moment, concentrating on their partner and dropping down everything. It was simply beautiful.

How do you like my Halloween party costume on Friday night's party?

It always hits me. I know what an amazing feeling dancing can give me. I know how deeply I can loose myself into a dance. I know all this, but when I feel it, the intensity of the feelings can really blow my mind away. I still remember, after more than 5 weeks, how amazed I was after dancing in HZF parties. There were so many good dances I couldn't choose "the dance" of the night. So many great dancers that time was lost too fast to dance enough with all of them. Not a single moment I would have felt uncomfortable, lost or disappointed on the dance floor. The atmosphere was so captivating, music so inspiring and dancers so connective that the dance flow hit me from the first dance on and before I noticed it was already time to go home. Purely ecstatic from the beginning to the end!

Well, as I was afraid, the above didn't pass on the beautiful feelings as I would have wanted. You see, this one weekend spent in HZF in the middle of dark autumn (combined with the great "warm up" weekend in Holland) was most probably the highlight of my dance year 2014. Not only because it was my home festival or because I was not only a participant there but most importantly because of the mind blowing dance parties. It is hard to explain exactly what made the parties so amazing (and I'm not talking only for my behalf here!) but if you were there, you know precisely what I mean. We all will be anxiously waiting for the next year's festival.