The forró scene in New York City: context and evolution
- Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
- Jul 23, 2022
- 5 min read
Updated: 13 hours ago
Maybe you just moved to the city. Maybe you are visiting and hoping to dance while you are here. Maybe you already live in New York but still feel like you have not quite found your place in the forró scene.
Or maybe this is all new to you. Maybe you are curious about forró, wondering what it is, how it feels, and where to begin.
Whatever brings you here, this article explores how the forró scene in New York City has developed and how it functions.
The most active forró scene in the US
New York has one of the most active forró scenes in North America.
It brings together a consistent network of weekly activities, dedicated educators, live bands, and musicians who keep the culture alive in the city.
At the same time, it is important to keep things in perspective. Compared to many scenes in Europe - and especially in Brazil - the New York scene is still relatively small, which is only natural given the different cultural contexts.
And yet, within that scale, it plays a unique role. For many people across the United States and beyond, New York becomes a kind of oasis - a place where it is actually possible to dance forró regularly, find community, and stay connected to the music.
There is no venue fully dedicated to forró events yet. Instead, the scene moves across different spaces in the city. Multiple venues have hosted forró events over the years, and some of them have offered weekly gatherings at different moments in time.
Alongside these regular events, the city also hosts smaller festivals throughout the year, often aligned with the seasons, bringing together dancers, teachers, and musicians from different places.
Important venues over the years
To understand the forró scene in New York, it is also important to look at the spaces that helped shape it over time.
Some of these venues are no longer active in the scene today, but they played a central role in building the community and creating regular spaces for music and dance.
Nublu - a nightclub on the Lower East Side of Manhattan - hosted weekly forró nights on Wednesdays for several years. Since the pandemic, those events are no longer active in a regular format. The venue still hosts occasional forró events, but not on a weekly basis.
Miss Favela was another key space for the scene, known for its Sunday parties with live music over many years. It became an important meeting point for dancers and musicians alike. Unfortunately, the venue closed its doors in 2025.
Active spaces in the forró scene in New York
In recent years, Beija-Flor has played an important role in maintaining regular forró activity in the city, hosting regular weekly nights with live music.
We have also had the joy of collaborating with them on different occasions over the years, including classes and as part of our Forró New York Weekend (see some photos below).
Another project worth mentioning is Forró do Povo, organized by Forró Lab. They host occasional parties centered around curated forró playlists, usually taking place at La Diaspora.
Beyond these, there are many other one-time forró events hosted by different venues throughout the city. These become especially frequent in June, during the season of festas juninas (traditional Brazilian June celebrations).
One of the most significant current initiatives:
the Forró New York Weekend
One of the central events in the current scene is the Forró New York weekend, a 3-day festival that we produce a few times per year. It is a weekend full of forró activities: 3 nights of parties and 2 afternoons of workshops.
These events tend to be the ones bringing the best crowd of forró dancers: most of the active forrozeiros in our scene participate and a number of dancers come from all over the globe to join us for this special event.
Our weekly classes have historically played an important role in connecting dancers in the city.
Other organizers and producers in the city
There are several organizers actively contributing to the forró scene in NYC and helping amplify what is happening across the city.
Davi and Dora are a good example. They began as Forró New York students and later became teaching assistants in our weekly classes. They now lead their own project in Brooklyn (Forró Brooklyn, at Esquina), focused on education and music, along with a shared calendar of events.
A group of our students and other members of the local community also created a practice initiative (Forró Lab), which has grown into its own set of events and activities, while also supporting and promoting the broader community calendar.
An adjacent scene - New Jersey
It is impossible to talk about the forró scene in New York without acknowledging its close relationship with New Jersey.
The geographic proximity, combined with the daily flow of people between the two states, naturally creates a strong exchange between communities. Dancers, teachers, and musicians often move between New York and New Jersey, contributing to a shared and evolving scene.
In New Jersey, especially in cities like Newark, there is a large Brazilian community. Even so, forró as an active and consistent scene is still in its early stages.
Over the years, there have been different initiatives. Some individuals have offered classes, and more recently, there have been efforts to establish regular weekly lessons.
At different moments, Brazilian restaurants have also hosted forró nights, sometimes including live music. However, these initiatives have not yet reached the same level of consistency found in New York.
Still, the presence of a growing community and ongoing efforts points to something meaningful. There is clear potential in New Jersey, and the connection between both sides continues to strengthen the scene as a whole.
Collaboration between New York and New Jersey is not only natural, but essential for the continued growth of forró in the region.
* This blog is intended as a general guide to help understand the forró scene in New York and its development over time. It is not designed to function as a continuously updated calendar of events. For that reason, activities not produced by Forró New York are not described with time-sensitive details that may require frequent updates or risk becoming outdated. It also intentionally avoids including external links or embedded tags that may change, be removed, or become inactive over time, in order to preserve the long-term reliability of the information presented.
About the author
Rafael Piccolotto de Lima is an experienced music and dance instructor. He is passionate about arts, a doctor of musical arts, and a Latin Grammy nominee as a composer. For him, all forms of expression are somehow related. Based on that premise, his interest and work have a wide spectrum: from a tail tux at a concert hall, to the dance shoes at a worn-out dance floor.
Born in Campinas, São Paulo - Brazil, now he lives at the NYC area, teaches weekly forró classes in Manhattan and produces some of the best forró festivals in North-America.
Website: www.rafaelpl.com
YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/rafaelpdelima
Instagram: www.instagram.com/rafaelpiccolottodelima/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/RafaelPiccolottodeLima/
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