“Corpo de dança.” Here I bring a Portuguese expression that maybe doesn’t have a literal translation into English, but it captures very well the topic of this article. It relates to body awareness, body movement, and body repertoire. It’s an expression we use in Portuguese to talk about understanding your body while you dance: having control over how your body moves and how you use it. This was the topic of a conversation I had with a great forró instructor from Belo Horizont

What makes a leader become one of the favorites on the dance floor? The forró dancer everyone wants to dance with? After more than 20 years dancing forró, going to weekly parties, and teaching for nearly a decade, I’ve learned that the essence of this dance goes far beyond technique and a vocabulary of moves. That’s exactly what this article is about! First of all, we need to understand that what matters most is the social experience of forró. It’s the feeling and the emotion

Have you ever noticed how the same dance can unfold in completely different ways? And I’m not talking about choosing steps, or styles and subgenres within forró, like forró universitário , roots , or any other branch. I’m talking about attitude and the kind of relationship and collaboration that arises between two partners in the act of dancing together. It’s about attentive listening, adapting to each other, how clearly the roles of leader and follower are defined, which res