Forró New York Weekend: How It All Began in 2019
Updated: 3 hours ago
The inaugural Autumn 2019 edition and the origins of a community-centered Brazilian forró festival in New York City.
In Autumn 2019, Forró New York Weekend held its inaugural edition, bringing together dancers, instructors, musicians, and members of the forró community for a weekend of workshops, live music, social dancing, and cultural exchange.
More than an isolated event, this first edition represented the culmination of several years of work to strengthen the forró dance community in New York City.
It also introduced a format that would become central to the festival's identity: relatively intimate gatherings combining local and visiting artists, diverse educational approaches, live Brazilian music, and a welcoming environment that encourages meaningful connections between participants.
Forró in New York: A History That Predates the Festival
Brazilian forró has a history in New York City that goes back well before the creation of Forró New York Weekend.
Online records document forró music and cultural activities in the city dating back at least to the mid-2000s. Musicians, bands, and cultural organizers were already contributing to the presence of this Brazilian musical tradition, and performances and gatherings may have taken place even earlier.
The development of a consistent partner-dance community, however, followed a different trajectory.
While dance classes, workshops, and social gatherings existed, these initiatives were often smaller, intermittent, or dependent on individual organizers and visiting instructors. Sustained opportunities for dancers to study, practice, and develop their skills were comparatively limited.
In 2017, I founded Forró New York, marking an important step toward establishing greater continuity in the city's forró dance education.
Through regular classes, workshops, visiting instructors, and community activities, the project sought to provide a more consistent environment for learning and practicing forró while strengthening connections between dancers and musicians.
For a broader perspective, explore Understanding Forró in New York City: Community, Culture and Scene Evolution, or read The Origins of Forró New York, a personal account of how the project began.
From the First Festival Initiatives to a New Format
The creation of Forró New York coincided with an important period in the development of forró dance communities across the United States.
During this period, Boston hosted an inaugural forró festival that helped encourage further connections and initiatives between communities.
In 2018, NY Forró Fest brought a festival experience to New York City, with Rafael participating as a guest instructor and coordinator of the educational program.
Later that year, Forró New York organized Forrobodó NY Festival, a special three-day event held in December 2018 to celebrate the music and cultural legacy of Luiz Gonzaga.
The event brought together live performances, dance classes, workshops, and social dancing, exploring the possibilities of connecting Brazilian musical traditions with an international dance community.
Read more about Forrobodó NY Festival (2018): Celebrating Luiz Gonzaga in New York.
Although conceived as a standalone event, Forrobodó became an important experience in developing larger cultural and educational programs.
These initiatives eventually helped shape a new vision: a recurring, relatively intimate festival that would combine workshops, live music, social dancing, and collaboration between artists from different communities.
That vision became Forró New York Weekend, launched in Autumn 2019.
2019: A Year of Educational Growth and Collaboration
The inaugural Forró New York Weekend followed an especially active period of educational initiatives and collaborations.
Earlier in 2019, Forró New York welcomed Brazilian dance instructor Camila Alves, who spent approximately five weeks in New York as part of a broader teaching tour across the United States and Canada.
Her extended stay created opportunities for continued study, workshops, and collaboration, allowing local dancers to engage with a visiting instructor beyond the format of a single workshop.
Later that year, Forró New York hosted another teaching residency with Milena Morais, accompanied by a smaller tour in the United States.
These experiences reflected an important part of the project's educational philosophy: bringing experienced instructors into sustained contact with the local community, encouraging deeper learning and exchange rather than relying exclusively on occasional events.
The inaugural Forró New York Weekend became a natural culmination of these initiatives.
Milena returned as the festival's featured guest instructor and Rafael's teaching partner, helping establish the collaborative educational approach that would continue to characterize future editions.
The Inaugural Forró New York Weekend: Autumn 2019
The first Forró New York Weekend brought together a diverse group of instructors and musicians, combining local talent with visiting artists from other cities.
Alongside featured guest Milena Morais, I had the pleasure of sharing the educational program with Bernard "Bento" Salles, who was traveling through the United States at the time, as well as visiting instructors from Boston, including Raisa Abdeen, Wanderson Teterelho, and Nathalia Neves.
The educational program also featured musician and educator Scott Kettner, who contributed to the event's music education activities, bringing an additional perspective on the rhythms and musical traditions of forró.
Forró Roots and Forró Universitário: Different Styles, Shared Experiences
One of the most interesting aspects of the inaugural edition was the coexistence of Forró Roots and Forró Universitário within the same educational program.
Rather than treating these styles as competing or mutually exclusive traditions, Forró New York Weekend approached them as complementary expressions of a shared dance culture.
Forró Universitário, with its broad repertoire of spins, combinations, and flowing movements, and Forró Roots, with its characteristic walking patterns, footwork, and particular approaches to partner connection, offered participants different perspectives on movement and musical interpretation.
The festival created opportunities for dancers to experience both approaches, learn from instructors with different backgrounds, and gradually develop a more versatile personal dance vocabulary.
This openness to different styles and teaching philosophies became an important characteristic of subsequent editions.
It also reflected a broader understanding of forró as a living social dance, constantly evolving through cultural exchange, experimentation, and interaction between communities.
For a more detailed exploration of these traditions, read Forró Roots vs. Forró Universitário: Similarities and Differences.
Bringing Music Education Into the Dance Experience
Another particularly significant aspect of the inaugural edition was the inclusion of a special musicality workshop led by Scott Kettner, percussionist and percussion educator.
Rather than approaching musicality exclusively through dance movements, this workshop introduced participants directly to the instruments and rhythms associated with forró music.
Dancers had the opportunity to engage with the instruments themselves, developing a more tangible understanding of the relationship between rhythm, musical structure, and partner dancing.
This workshop established an important precedent for the festival and reflected the broader educational vision of Forró New York: recognizing that understanding the music is an essential part of developing as a dancer.
The festival also featured a performance by Maracatu New York, creating another opportunity for collaboration with Scott Kettner and introducing participants to another dimension of Brazilian musical culture.
These activities helped establish a distinctive connection between dance education, music education, and live cultural experiences, an approach that would continue to evolve in later editions.
Live Music, DJs, and Local Collaborations
Live music was another essential component of the first edition.
The festival featured live music on three different nights, each highlighting a different artist and ensemble: Let's Vamos, a trio visiting from Boston led by Tarcísio Alves; Nani Assis and his band; and Codeone and his band. Together, these performances brought a diverse range of musical experiences to the festival, connecting artists from New York and beyond.
The combination of live performances and carefully selected DJ sets created different environments for dancing, listening, and social interaction.
The inaugural edition also included a free, publicly accessible opening party, reflecting another principle that would continue in later editions: developing collaborations with local cultural spaces, entertainment venues, and community partners.
These collaborations offered opportunities to connect the festival with New York's broader cultural landscape while creating more accessible entry points for people discovering forró.
Supporting musicians active in New York, while also welcoming visiting artists, became an important part of the festival's identity.
An Intimate Festival Built Around Community
From the beginning, Forró New York Weekend was conceived as something more personal than a large, impersonal event.
Its relatively intimate scale encouraged interaction between instructors and students, musicians and dancers, experienced participants and newcomers.
Workshops, parties, live music, and informal conversations were all part of the same shared experience.
The goal was not simply to present a sequence of classes and performances, but to create an environment in which people could learn, dance, connect, and feel part of a community.
Even during this inaugural edition, a small informal group of volunteers contributed to the event's organization.
This early involvement established another important precedent. In subsequent editions, volunteer teams would become a more structured part of the festival, supporting production while strengthening participants' sense of involvement and shared responsibility.
The welcoming atmosphere, collaborative spirit, and close relationships between artists, instructors, and participants became central to the character of Forró New York Weekend.
Learn more about how this collaborative approach developed in Volunteers, Guest Teachers, Artists, and Community Collaboration at Forró New York.
From the First Weekend to a Continuing Tradition
The inaugural edition of Forró New York Weekend established a format that would continue to evolve through subsequent editions.
Its defining elements remained consistent: an intimate and welcoming atmosphere, educational diversity, collaborations between local and visiting artists, live Brazilian music, social dancing, and meaningful community participation.
After the interruption of in-person activities during the COVID-19 pandemic, the festival returned in Autumn 2021.
Beginning in 2022, Forró New York Weekend expanded into multiple seasonal editions each year, welcoming new instructors, musicians, DJs, volunteers, and participants from different parts of the United States and internationally.
The festival gradually became an important recurring gathering within the New York forró scene, while maintaining the community-centered character established during its first edition.
What began as the culmination of several educational and cultural initiatives in 2019 developed into a continuing tradition of artistic collaboration, dance education, and cultural exchange.
The story of the first Forró New York Weekend is therefore more than the history of a single festival edition. It is also a reflection of the sustained work involved in building a dance community, connecting artists, and creating spaces for Brazilian music and culture to flourish in New York City.
Explore Forró New York Weekend
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rafael Piccolotto de Lima is the Founder and Educational Director of Forró New York, as well as a Latin Grammy-nominated composer, arranger, and music director.
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