At 20 Years Old, I Found More Than a Dance Class
- Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Many of the decisions that end up shaping our lives don’t feel particularly important when we make them. A class, a hobby, or a place we decide to visit on a Wednesday night can seem insignificant at the time, only to reveal its importance years later.
When I was twenty, I wasn’t looking for a community, a long-term passion, or something that would remain part of my life for decades. Like many young adults, I was simply trying to figure out what I enjoyed doing, how I wanted to spend my free time, and how to build a social life that felt meaningful.
What I found through social dancing ended up influencing friendships, travel, relationships, professional opportunities, and much of the way I would experience community throughout adulthood. None of that was obvious in the beginning.
The story actually started a few years earlier.
When I was sixteen, I took my first dance classes.
My girlfriend’s family was involved in Brazilian ballroom dance culture, and through them I was introduced to a world of partner dancing that included bolero, samba, forró, waltz, and several other dances.
I enjoyed the experience, but it never quite felt like my world.
Most of the dancers were older. Many of the dances felt formal and highly structured. More importantly, I was there because of a relationship. It wasn’t a community I had chosen for myself.
Eventually, I stopped going. A few years later, during university, I found my way back to dance. This time, everything was different.
Looking for My Own Place
At twenty, I was studying in Barão Geraldo, the university district of Campinas.
Like many young adults, I was trying to figure out what kind of life I wanted outside of classes, work, and family. I explored many of the usual options - university parties, bars, clubs, different social circles, and different ways of meeting people. Some of those experiences were enjoyable, but none of them seemed to offer the combination of things I was looking for.
At some point, I remembered a friend who danced forró. I had watched her become deeply involved in that world through classes, performances, and social events.
Something about it appealed to me. The music was certainly part of it, but so was the social aspect and the possibility of meeting people through a shared activity rather than simply sitting around talking.
So I decided to give it a try. At the time, I thought I was simply signing up for dance classes.
Nights at Cooperativa Brasil
The center of my dance life quickly became Cooperativa Brasil, a well-known forró venue in Campinas.
The building itself was memorable. A former brick factory transformed into a dance hall.
People from very different backgrounds gathered there. University students, professors, construction workers, gardeners, cooks, lawyers, musicians. People who might never have crossed paths elsewhere spent their evenings sharing the same dance floor.
Most nights followed a familiar rhythm.
I would spend the day at university and head to dance class in the evening.
The classes created a surprisingly effective social environment. Partners rotated constantly, which meant everyone interacted with everyone else. Whether you were shy or outgoing, experienced or new, you inevitably met people.
After class, a group of us would often walk to a nearby snack bar while waiting for the party to fill up.
The venue officially opened at ten, but people rarely arrived at ten. The room would start almost empty, with a few dancers on the floor, music playing, and small conversations happening around the edges of the hall. Little by little, more people arrived, the dance floor expanded, and the energy shifted. By the time the live band began playing after midnight, the room felt completely different.
Learning How to Meet People
At twenty, I was more shy than I am today. I enjoyed conversations, but I was often hesitant to start them with people I didn’t know. Inviting someone to dance felt intimidating at first. There was always the possibility of rejection, the fear that I wasn’t dancing well enough, or simply the worry that the interaction might feel awkward.
What helped wasn’t some sudden transformation but repetition. During my first year, I immersed myself in dance, attending classes five nights a week and usually participating in at least two social dances every weekend. Within a few months, many of those fears had largely disappeared, not because I had consciously decided to become more confident, but because I had repeated the same interaction hundreds of times.
At some point, inviting someone to dance became normal. Meeting new people became normal. Walking into a room full of strangers became normal.
More Than a Place to Dance
What I gradually realized was that social dancing offered a kind of social experience that I struggled to find elsewhere. I was never particularly interested in spending entire evenings drinking, and many social environments seemed to revolve around either the people you arrived with or a specific objective.
Dance felt different because the activity itself already had value. Even before any conversation, friendship, or connection emerged, there was music, movement, and something to explore together for the duration of a song. Sometimes that interaction ended there. Sometimes it led to a conversation. Sometimes it led to seeing that person again the following week.
Some nights I was excited about the band that was playing. Other nights I was looking forward to seeing people I hadn’t seen in weeks. Sometimes I wanted to dance as much as possible, while on other evenings I spent more time talking than dancing. The experience could take different directions and still feel worthwhile.
Friendship, Community, and Possibility
One of the things I appreciated most about social dancing was the balance between familiarity and novelty.
There were always people I looked forward to seeing again, but there were also always new people, new conversations, new dances, and new experiences.
Like many people in their twenties, I was also interested in meeting potential romantic partners. What I appreciated about social dancing was that those possibilities existed alongside everything else that made the experience enjoyable.
Unlike a date or a dating app, where a specific outcome often feels like the point of the interaction, a dance could remain just a dance, a conversation could remain just a conversation, or something more could gradually emerge over time. There was no need to force any particular outcome for the evening to feel worthwhile.
Realizing What Dance Had Become
Years later, I moved to the United States. For a long time, I struggled to find an equivalent to what dance had provided in Brazil. Only after it disappeared from my life did I fully understand the role it had been playing.
I missed the music, the movement, the spontaneous interactions, and the feeling of having a place where human connection happened naturally. There was a gap that other activities never quite filled.
A Sweet and Frustrating Reunion
When I eventually found forró again in New York, the experience was strangely bittersweet. I was excited because I immediately recognized the potential and could see the possibility of rebuilding something that had been important to me for years.
At the same time, I felt frustrated. The dance culture was still developing, the scene was smaller, and the shared dance vocabulary I had known in Brazil wasn’t always there yet. People loved the music, but the social dynamics felt different from what I had experienced before.
Still, I could see what it might become. Part of the reason I eventually became involved in organizing and teaching was that I wanted to help shape the kind of environment I had been hoping to find when I first arrived.
The Same Pattern in Different Places
Many years later, I found myself teaching workshops in Europe. After one event, a group of local dancers invited me to dinner. Dinner led to conversations, the conversations led to the social dance, and the social dance led to new introductions. At the end of the evening, I walked with one of the dancers toward her bus stop while making my way back to where I was staying.
Nothing extraordinary happened, yet the evening felt deeply meaningful. There had been a workshop, a shared meal, music, dancing, conversations, and several new connections, all unfolding naturally over the course of a single evening. As I reflected on it later, I realized that the structure of the evening felt remarkably familiar. The city was different, the language was different, and I was at a very different stage of life, but the underlying experience felt surprisingly similar to what I had first encountered years earlier in Campinas.
Looking Back
Today, social dancing remains part of my life in ways I could never have anticipated at twenty.
As a composer, arranger, and educator, I spend much of my time working alone. Writing, producing, practicing, and teaching are activities that happen largely in solitude, and I genuinely enjoy that way of working.
Dance became a natural counterbalance. It gave me a reason to leave the studio, move my body, listen to live music, reconnect with familiar faces, meet new people, and participate in something shared.
Some weeks that means teaching a group class. Other weeks it means attending a social dance somewhere in the city. Occasionally it means organizing a festival, teaching private lessons, or traveling to another community. The form changes, but the role it plays in my life has remained surprisingly consistent.
When I signed up for those classes in Barão Geraldo, I was simply looking for an activity that seemed more interesting than the alternatives I had found at the time. What surprised me was not that I kept dancing, but how many different parts of my life would eventually intersect with it over the years that followed.
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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