Dear intermediate Dancers,

I'm very grateful for all of you for taking the steps to learn Kizomba and becoming a vital part of the Halifax Kizomba community. It warms my heart to see people dancing at a level high enough to truly be enjoying themselves and flowing together. It's been magical for me the last little while. From going from having a striving scene pre pandemic, to it almost dissapearing and having found myself questionning if I was even going to keep dancing and teaching Kizomba. I've found my passion again through teaching you guys and growing the community again. We truly have a special community here that has a big open heart and a desire to connect, have fun and flow together. I may be a little bias, but I love it here, even if growing as a dancer can be challenging and even if you do get the feeling of needing to go to bigger cities to dance once in a while.

While this last year and a half has created the special scene that we have today, I hope you don't take it for granted and that you keep investing in yourself and the community to keep it growing, healthy and beautiful. This is not something that I can do alone, everyone in the community is an important part of it and helps the community be what is it. So, if you want the scene to keep getting better and the level to keep going up and the good vibes to keep flowing, I highly suggest that you keep learning, sharing your love for Kizomba and participating in the community. In my eyes at least, the scene has just started being good, but we could still bring the level way up. I still have so much to share. I may be a little selfish, but I would love to dance at a higher level in Halifax, I hope you do to. At the moment I'm having fun and enjoying dancing with most of you, which is so important, but it could be so much better if you guys kept training.

I put together the Winter 2023 schedule together to address the weaknesses in the scene in the hopes to help the scene level up in a big way by this summer. One of the things would love to see and experience is a better understanding and dance ability in Tarraxo as well as a better understanding of all the styles and the ability and understanding of how to dance each style and be able to give a good dance that matches the music and the style. Most of you right now just have a general foundation, but are do not know how to adapt your dancing to match the different styles or what makes each style what it is. I would love to have deeper more musical dances that match the style. It just feels so good to truly dance the music (there is truly a reason each style is danced the way it is to each style's music). And of course I will continue teaching Isolations and higher level vocabulary, as those are also needed to get the level of the scene up. As they say you don't know what you don't know. There are still so many levelling up that we could do.

The isolation class is always an amazing gift to yourself as it slowly traines your body not only to style and to do the isolation style dances, but it also builds your core and teaches you to do all these movements in a supported and healthy way that keep your body healthy and pain free. The ability to do isolations opens so many doors of new possibilities of movement.

The Tarraxo class will run from January to June (I recommend the Isolation class before it as a perfect companion that will make you a dancer to watch out for on any dance floor) This 6 month dive into Tarraxo will give people the time to truly understand and practice the moves to actually feel like Tarraxo dancers. Right now after a couple of workshops I feel like you guys have ideas of how to dance it, but it's not really coming together yet. I'm excited to really get that leveling up in the community. It's such a fun dance, and it's definitly the fasters growing style at the moment. 

The Styles class will explore one style each month, starting with Semba. This will cover, the specific posture and walk for the style as well as which vocabulary you can use, musicality, and new vocabulary, footwork and styles specific to each style. Now this will only be an introduction, as each style is it's own dance that can be studies seperately for years. But what you will get out of this is the ability to recognise the music, and how to adapt your dancing to match it. Thus being able to give your partner a good dance that feels right to the music. For example many of you want to dance Semba with me, but if you walk the normal way, you actually feel heavy and hard to move when dancing Semba, just a couple of tweaks would make you feel light and give your partner a much better dance. So, hoping you will take the opportunity to take this class.

I have also found that training Semba and Tarraxo are excellent ways to improve your Urban Kiz dancing. Tarraxo works a lot on knww connection and allows many interesting foot slides that you can also use in Urban Kiz. For Semba, as both styles can be fast, some of the techniques in Semba can be used to help you both be quicker on your feet but also use for feet styling mostly. I have found over the years that each style you train in does help you get better at the other styles over time.

Lastly the Intermediate Variations class, will explore variations on a move for 4 weeks at a time. The first move we will explore is the Walk around (or as many of you call it the bean) it may be a pretty simple move, but it's used extensively in all walking styles of Kizomba, as it's the start of many more complex patterns/moves from Ochos to turns. It's also for leads one of the places that is easy to style in. I will teach these variations and many others and will also teach styling for both lead and follows within these moves. This class is great to keep expanding your vocabulary to keep your social dances interesting and fresh. 

I also hope that you take advantage of the Sunday practices and come train your vocabulary to help in integrate into your social dancing.

I also always recommend repeating levels (this is why I make it affordable with a $5 drop-in and you can join anytime, you don't have to follow the whole session. Every time you take a class over again I find that you get more details that you missed the first time around. Even me, 15 years in my learning journey I still go to beginner classes when I travel. You do have to come in with the right attitude to enjoy it, I go to work on details, refine my moves and find variations I can do with basics. It's also a great way to connect with and encourage up and coming dancers that could become a great addition to the scene in the future.

Saying all that, we all have lives, starting with me, and it's not always possible to pay for classes or have the time or health to take classes. Always take care of yourself first. Also, not all of you may be as passionate about learning the dance and may be content and happy with what you already know. That is OK too. I just would like to see the scene keep growing and getting better and keeping creating something special in Halifax! I can't do it without you! But also let's celebrate how far we have come, the dancers and people we have become. It's already something to be proud of. Not many people invest their energy and time into learning a skill. Not many people are able to be so real to truly connect and dance on that level with someone. So yay for us!

A few things coming up this Winter: in February a Konpa workshop (because many of you have been asking, and as you saw at festivals it's the new things). Also, in March or April a workshop on Co-creative Kizomba, a style of kizomba I developped around 5 years ago, that I use to teach. It's basically dancing without starting with designated roles and constantly switching who is leading/following during the dance. It's a lot of fun and brings playfulness to the next level. I feel like you guys are getting ready for this, so I'm excited to bring it back!

See you guys very soon!

Best,

Brigitte