ABOUT FORRÓ NEW YORK

Forró New York is a forró project based in New York City, founded in 2017 by Brazilian musician, educator, producer, and dancer Rafael Piccolotto de Lima.

 

The project emerged during a period of visible growth in the New York forró scene, when local classes, social dances, and cultural gatherings were becoming more active and interconnected. At the time, one of the initial goals of Forró New York was simply to help organize access to information about the scene itself - classes, events, musicians, workshops, and community activities happening throughout the city.

 

Alongside the creation of the website in 2017, the project also began organizing weekly group classes, private lessons, and collaborations with local dancers and musicians. During this first period, activities were primarily centered around building consistency and helping create regular spaces for learning and social dancing in New York.

 

As the weekly activities stabilized and the community gradually expanded, the project also started participating more actively in events outside New York City, connecting with other forró communities across the United States and Canada.

 

By 2018, the educational structure and weekly activities had become more established. That same year, Forró New York organized its first larger weekend event in New York - a special edition festival dedicated to Luiz Gonzaga. Although conceived as a unique event at the time, it became an important early experience in developing larger-scale programming that combined workshops, live music, and social dancing.

 

Around this period, New York also started receiving a growing number of visiting guest instructors for workshops and collaborative events, something that would later become a recurring part of the project’s activities.

 

In 2019, collaborations with guest teachers became even more central to the development of the project. During this period, Forró New York expanded its partnerships with local communities in other cities, participating in and helping organize events connected to scenes in places such as Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington DC, Montreal, and Toronto.

 

This period also marked the creation of the Forró New York Weekend festival, which would later become one of the main recurring structures of the project.

 

At the same time, the teaching methods and educational approach continued evolving through constant interaction with dancers, guest instructors, workshops, festivals, and the practical realities of building a forró community outside Brazil.

 

In 2020, the pandemic forced an abrupt interruption of in-person activities and reorganized the structure of the project completely.

 

During this period, Forró New York began developing its online educational platform, initially as a way to maintain continuity for students during lockdowns and social distancing. Over time, the project expanded into a large online educational ecosystem focused on English-language forró education, including recorded courses, workshops, guided practices, musicality training, solo exercises, and long-form educational material for individual study at home.

 

Many of the workshops and collaborations recorded throughout these years - both in New York and during special events in other cities - gradually became part of this growing educational archive.

 

In 2021, in-person activities slowly returned, alongside the reactivation of the Forró New York Weekend festival.

 

From 2022 onward, the festival structure expanded significantly, gradually becoming a recurring seasonal event hosted multiple times throughout the year. Each edition developed its own atmosphere, invited artists and teachers, and different combinations of workshops, parties, and collaborations.

 

Over time, the festival also became an important meeting point connecting the local New York scene with the broader international forró community.

 

Alongside the festivals, the project continued maintaining its weekly classes, private lessons, online courses, workshops, educational content, and collaborations with artists and instructors from different regions.

 

Today, Forró New York operates as an interconnected educational and cultural ecosystem centered around forró practice, music, dance, and community development.

 

Its activities continue to combine weekly classes in New York City, online education, festival organization, social dance culture, workshops, and long-term collaborations extending far beyond the city itself.

 

Rather than functioning as a single isolated initiative, the project gradually developed into an ongoing network of educational, cultural, and community-based activities connected through forró.