WEEK 1: “Ground to  Bliss” 

It’s a retreat - a journey that invites us to travel from a foundational and grounded state to the cosmos.  We will be traveling through all energetic centers in our bodies from the root to the crown, finding the balance and integrating all of them - through exploring different healing modalities and somatic practices of conscious movement, meditation, Yoga, local ceremonies, Eutonia, Contact beyond Contact and incorporating them into our zouk dance, applying these concepts.

Dance training through concepts, different qualities, and archetypes - with the container of safe, supportive, allowing and providing development space.

Liberating, sensitizing, and understanding the energy flow in our bodies, improving our dance technique alongside that expanded understanding of universal flow.

Learning how to be a better dancer through being a better human :) 







WEEK 2: dive into the Brenderson tecnique:

LEAD & FOLLOW 


  Who never got impressed with the crazy dynamics, going from super fast turns to super slow pauses in the middle of the movement that A&B show in their demos? Oh well, the relaxed aspect of it comes from the way they use ground, but the speed, is basically communicated by their technique of lead and follow.

If grounding is the base of the dance in terms of movement, lead and follow is the base of what will make this movement to be communicated. And this is one of the most important aspects to make our dance “social”..
The possibility of communicating with anybody, from any part of the world, by understanding the language that intelligent and fluid bodies use to incorporate a leader role or a follower role, in this case, through zouk.

A&B got very nerdy in this aspect of dancing. That was how they got so much into their connection… It was not from breathing or spirituality, that was actually a consequence of studying the elements of lead and follow.

So in this chapter, they are very excited to share some of the secrets behind their connection:



The rule of intensity. 

It’s a tool that will help you to develop one of the most important skills on a social dancer: The ability of understanding and adapting to different leaders or followers by matching speed, frame, tension and pressure in many different ways..

From the center.

The technique of locating the center of energy by the base of the spine that helps the information to go easily to the center up to create fluid head movements, or to the center down to create refined traveling steps. This will also be deeply addressed in the Grounding chapter.


Power of sensitive waiting. 

That’s one of the most difficult skills to develop as a follower. The relaxed state of attention. Where they don’t anticipate the movement. Where they need to be very connected with their bodies, to not do a movement because they understand it but because they feel it. We gonna practice that with exercises to increase sensitivity, awareness and perception.


Organization and structure. 
 

This is the base of what makes leaders clear and precise. Their ability of organizing what they want, with what they have and what they can do with it. How to use their body to create movement and to maintain flow and how to be creative and efficient with the frame or the points of contact.



Power of fluid decision.

That’s one of the most important skills to develop as a leader. Being clear and precise with what they want without being demanding and controlling. For that we will go through 2 big aspects of leading: The attitude/action and the listening.
 

Power of touch. 

 

After having the technical-mechanical aspects of connection, we will go through the technical-sensitive aspects of it. Of course when we think about Anderson and Brenda, we think also about yummy dances, and by studying this element, this could be a consequence. Touch is the mainly channel that we communicate in the dance and we will understand some of the layers of the skin that create different kinds of quality in then movement. Either for who touches and for who receives the touch.




Wow, that’s a lot and we are very thankful to have 7 days to go into this journey with you. We hope every one goes out of this with a wider vocabulary to communicate better between each other and to anyone the cross your dance journey! 🤍