Update on the Kizomba classes

Our Freshman Kizomba is going very well. Especially when you consider that it's a totally new dance in Korea. Matter of fact I don't think anybody's even doing it in Japan or China.......yet. But I'm sure it's going to happen soon.

Last Saturday we had 4 lovely ladies and 2 guys (counting me). I might add also that the ladies were from 4 different countries.....Ukraine, Czech Republic, S.Africa and US(or maybe it was Canada. And one of our ladies, Sarah, had to be absent. So that makes us at 5 + 2 so far.

Guys, this is a great opportunity for you to really get some great practice in with some very nice ladies. I promise it'll do wonders for you leading stills.

Ladies, I know that those numbers (i.e. men vs. ladies) might sound discouraging but, trust me, me and Derik(the other guy...who's Korean by the way)....we do a lot of rotating. So you will get plenty of practice. And I'm confident that we will get some more guys pretty soon. For the simple reason that the ladies in our group are so pretty.

Anyway.........all our students have been very enthusiastic as they discovered who nice Kizomba really is.

I had been told by two of the international level instructors who are members of my other site, www.kizombadancer.com that salseros and salseras find Kizomba fairly easy to learn. And I was also told that dancers find it easy to enjoy dancing Kizomba after learning even just the basics. Unlike salsa, you don't have to know a lot of tricks to enjoy it a lot.

Another thing that's happening is that I'm sharing some personal philosophies I've had about leading and following which I think the dancers have found unique and valuable. Because of the unique 'asymmetrical' step of Kizomba, there's actually a lot more flexibility to modify the timing if it fits the music. So..... once you learn the basic steps, it's a lot easier to be expressive in Kizomba.

We'll be exploring that expressive side of Kizomba more in future classes.

So far I've been able to give all the attending students a CD that I made from my personal music collection. About half of it has been real Kizomba music but the other half has been the eclectic types of music such as I've been listening to a lot in the last year or so.

There's many diffferent genres of music nowadays which I don't know the proper names of. I've heard the names....like chill, techno, house, dub, and several others but I'm just not familiar with them except that I know what I like when I hear it. My personal term for it is 'progressive dance' or 'progressive world beat'.

I've found that the students in our Kizomba class really like it because they're discovering new kinds of music that are really fun to dance to. Frankly, I'm not surprised. Being able to dance to these other kinds of music is kinda natural to me because I was a music major in college. But still......I've always believed that good dancers can dance to just about anything.

I was even enjoying some American C&W (Country and Western) music a few days ago......a guy named "Josh Turner"(you can hear what he sounds like on an excellent, free streaming music site called www.grooveshark.com. ; Josh'es music has lots of that sweetness that I like Bachata for.

Also.....Grooveshark is an excellent site to find very high quality music. I've found Weather Report, Paul Simon, Lhasa, Mariza, Fado, Tower of Power, Manhattan Transfer, Swingle Singers, Los Lobos. Nat King Cole, Woody Herman, Pete Fountain.......it just goes on and on.

Next to Pandora (www.pandora.com), which is blocked from Korea, I think Grooveshark is the best free streaming music site on the net.

Anyway......the plan that's developing is that I'll be coming up to Seoul (from where I work near Gumi) every other week. I've got to come into the office at school, in Buksam-eup, 2 Saturdays a month and that of course prevents me from getting too far on Saturday afternoons.

But those Saturday's that I'm not working, I enjoy coming up to Seoul on Friday evening for Bachata Night over at Bahia Salsa Club in Hongdae. Then I usually stay in a jimjilbang that night and then do the Kizomba class at Candela in the afternoon. After that I've got to catch a train back to Daegu because I participate in a casino rueda class at Babalu Salsa club in Daegu. Otherwise I'd have more flexibility in scheduling the Kizomba class.

This next Saturday, May 8th, I'll be coming up again and I'm thinking we're going to work on one of the very unique movements in Kizomba called "Saida". It means 'ladies outward crosswalk' or something like that. It looks really nice but there some small but important nuances that we've got to get really right for it to really 'shine'. I think we can do it. We'll do Saida plus maybe one other new pattern.

I'm trying to make these classes really worthwhile for the students. Everybody is getting lots of time to practice and to ask questions. I'm also rotating the music a lot. I don't want our students to be the kind of dancers who can only dance to one or two songs and only with the people they know from class.

I'll also mention that Derik, our Korean gentleman, has a very nice style and all of our ladies are doing very well. They're really having fun and that's what I wanted to see.

And here's where we're heading with all this:

Our next objective is to do some Kizomba in the clubs. Once we can show people what it looks like, I think more people will want to learn it. We'll have to get the DJs to play some for us, of course but I think we can do that. Even if it's just for us doing a 'demo'.

There's also another way we can do it though:

We can do Kizomba to most raggeton. Depending on the particular song, it works pretty well. Secondly, we can do it so some Bachata songs. Not all.....but some. And thirdly, we can always take a CD and just ask the DJ to play it. Depending on various factors, they might.

But first we've got to be able to do it.

The other big thing that's going to happen within the next few months is that Nelson Campos is going to be coming to Korea. Nelson has a website called www.kentsalsa.com but he's primarily a Kizomba teacher.

Nelson is actually from Guinea Bissau, where Kizomba is one of the popular club dances. But he's been living in England for several years and he teaches and performs all around England and Europe.

When he gets here I'm hoping we can work out a way for him to do some a class for us. It might be at Candela or it could be somewhere else in Seoul. There are ome details that need to be worked out but still.....I'd like to have a small to moderate group of dancers here who he can work with. The further along we are by the time he gets here, the more he'll be able to teach us when he comes.

So......last thing...........

A special thanks goes out to Pillhwan for his generosity in providing the room for us to meet and practice. It is most appreciated and we all owe Pillhwan a big 'thank-you'!

That's it for me. Call if you need more info or just wanna talk.

Best regards,
Art Williams
010 5822 2277

P.S. We have two related sites that you can join for free: http://kizombadancer.com and http://meetup.com/kizomba-korea. And notice a couple of pictures I'm posting here of our first two classes.