I Am a Forró Social Dancer. Let Me Tell You Why.

If someone asked me what kind of dancer I am, my answer would be simple: I am a social dancer.

I did not arrive at that answer immediately. When I first started dancing forró during my university years in Campinas, I was fascinated by many of the same things that fascinate most beginners. I wanted to learn new movements, admired dancers with distinctive styles, and paid attention to teachers who seemed capable of creating endless possibilities on the dance floor.

For a while, I assumed that becoming a better dancer meant accumulating more vocabulary.

It took me some time to notice that the moments I remembered most vividly after a night of dancing had very little to do with specific movements. What stayed with me were the interactions. A dance that felt unexpectedly easy. A conversation that unfolded naturally. A person I had never met before and somehow ended up dancing with three or four times in the same evening.

For me, a social dancer is someone for whom the interaction itself becomes the center of the experience. The movements matter. Technique matters. Musicality matters. But they matter because they enrich that interaction, not because they create something impressive to observe from the outside.

At first glance, this may seem like a subtle distinction. In my experience, however, it changes almost everything about how a person approaches dance.

Discovering Forró in Campinas

I learned to dance forró during my university years in Campinas, in the countryside of São Paulo.

At the time, Cooperativa Brasil was one of the most influential spaces connected to the university forró movement, and I immersed myself in it completely. Alongside my music studies at UNICAMP, I started taking dance classes almost every day and progressed relatively quickly through the school’s curriculum, eventually reaching the final advanced group.

Like many beginners, I became fascinated by everything that seemed possible inside the dance. Every week there was a new turn, a new variation, a new pattern that felt exciting and sophisticated. I admired the teachers, admired dancers with distinctive styles, and paid close attention to people who seemed capable of creating endless combinations and possibilities on the dance floor.

Naturally, I wanted to learn all of it.

Every class seemed to reveal a new possibility. There was always another movement to learn, another detail to understand, another path to explore.

But something interesting started happening once I left the classroom and arrived at the parties.

When I Realized the Conversation Was More Interesting Than the Vocabulary

At the parties, reality was different.

Not everyone knew the same movements. Not everyone had gone through the same training, and not everyone responded in the way I had learned to expect in class. Many of the combinations that looked beautiful in a controlled environment suddenly became less important. Some worked perfectly well. Others didn’t. And some depended on technical knowledge that simply wasn’t there.

What surprised me was that the most enjoyable dances were rarely the ones with the most elaborate vocabulary.

The dances I remembered most vividly were usually the ones that flowed naturally. The ones where communication remained open and both people could relax enough to stop worrying about whether things were being done correctly and simply enjoy the interaction.

I could turn the dance into a technical challenge. I could constantly test the person dancing with me and fill the song with increasingly complex patterns. Or I could follow a different path altogether. I could simplify when necessary, adapt when things unfolded differently than expected, and build the dance around the person in front of me rather than around an ideal version of how the movement was supposed to happen.

Without realizing it, I was becoming interested in something that I would later think of as functional dancing.

Not in the sense of reducing the dance, but in the sense of making it work with different people, different levels of experience, different personalities, and different moments. I became fascinated by the possibility of creating dances that remained enjoyable even when two people had never danced together before and did not share exactly the same vocabulary.

Those dances were often more enjoyable, more playful, and more unpredictable than the ones built around technical execution alone.

And outside the dance itself, something else started happening.

Friendships emerged. Conversations continued after the music ended. Some people became part of my daily life. Some became brief flirtations, others became lasting relationships, and many became friendships that remained long after that period of my life was over.

When I think back on that period, what stands out is not any particular friendship, flirtation, or relationship.

What stays with me is the realization that all of those possibilities seemed to emerge from the same place. Two people shared a dance, and from something that lasted only a few minutes, entirely different kinds of connections could begin.

I found that endlessly fascinating.

The Invitation to Perform

Eventually, some of the teachers approached me and invited me to join the school’s performance team.

At that age, I felt genuinely honored by the invitation. It felt like recognition, a sign that the years I had spent immersed in classes, parties, and practice had not gone unnoticed. I saw it as an opportunity to learn, to challenge myself, and to experience a side of dance that until then I had only observed from a distance.

So I accepted immediately.

And honestly, I do not regret it.

The experience taught me a great deal. I learned new skills, spent time with wonderful people, participated in presentations, helped as a monitor and teaching assistant, and became involved in parts of the dance world that I probably would not have understood otherwise. At one point, we even spent months preparing for a dance competition, rehearsing choreographies repeatedly and working on elements that belonged much more to the world of performance than to the world of social dancing.

There was something satisfying about pursuing precision, refining movements, and working collectively toward a shared goal. Like many dancers, I admired people capable of creating visually impressive performances, and I was curious to understand that universe from the inside.

But somewhere during that process I started noticing a feeling that never completely disappeared.

I enjoyed the people. I enjoyed the rehearsals. I enjoyed the learning process itself.

What I was no longer enjoying in quite the same way was the dance.

The more time we spent repeating the same sequences, refining the same choreography, and pursuing the same visual result, the more I realized that the part of dancing that fascinated me most was slowly being pushed aside.

What attracted me to dance had always been the possibility that neither person knew exactly where the next moment would lead.

As a musician, this realization felt strangely familiar. Even in my professional life, what has always fascinated me most is the creative process itself: improvisation, composition, arranging, discovering possibilities, exploring ideas that emerge in real time. I have always been drawn toward situations where there is room for investigation, adaptation, surprise, and dialogue.

The performance environment required something different.

The goal was consistency. The goal was repetition. The goal was reproducing the same result every time.

There is absolutely value in that. Entire artistic disciplines are built around that pursuit.

But I gradually realized that it was not the aspect of dance that made me want to keep coming back.

What excited me was the moment when something unexpected happened between two people: a musical phrase interpreted differently, a playful response, a spontaneous adjustment, something that could never be repeated exactly the same way again.

The moments I talked about afterward were rarely the rehearsals where everything worked perfectly. They were the dances where something unexpected happened. A musical idea that appeared out of nowhere. A moment of connection that neither person could have planned. A dance that somehow became memorable without either dancer trying to make it memorable.

Those were the experiences I kept carrying home with me.

Why Performance Never Became the Center of My Dance

This is a point that can easily be misunderstood.

The issue was never performance itself.

Even at that age, I already knew that performance would probably remain part of my life in one way or another. I was studying music seriously, and my professional path was already beginning to take shape around composition, arranging, conducting, and performance. Being on stage was not something foreign to me. It was something I expected to continue doing.

The difference was that music gradually became my profession, while dance remained my playground.

And somewhere along the way, I realized that my relationship with dance was beginning to change.

As we prepared for performances and competitions, rehearsals became increasingly focused on repetition. We would spend hours refining the same material, working toward greater precision and consistency. The movements became more complex, sometimes involving lifts, tricks, and physical demands that were never particularly connected to what had originally attracted me to dancing.

At one point, I even started feeling discomfort in my shoulder from forcing movements that did not feel especially natural to me.

But what stayed with me most was not the physical aspect.

It was the creative one.

What has always fascinated me, whether in music or dance, is the possibility of discovery. Even as a musician, I have always been drawn toward improvisation, composition, and situations where something emerges in real time rather than being reproduced exactly as planned.

I enjoy finding a path while moving through it.

I enjoy responding to what is happening in the moment.

I enjoy the small decisions that appear when there is no script dictating what comes next.

The more time I spent working with choreography, the more I realized that this was precisely the part of the experience I missed.

Choreography replaces discovery with repetition. It asks for consistency rather than exploration. There is tremendous artistry in that process, and I have a great deal of respect for the people who dedicate themselves to it.

But little by little, I realized it was not the kind of artistic experience I was looking for in dance.

The Difference Between Social Dance and Performance

Social dance and performance dance often operate under entirely different assumptions.

When we sit down to watch a ballet, a contemporary dance production, a theatrical performance, or a Cirque du Soleil show, we are entering an experience that was designed to be observed. Part of its purpose is visual. The audience expects a polished result, and the performers spend years developing highly specialized skills in order to create that experience.

The relationship between performer and audience is central to the form itself.

Social dance comes from a different place.

Of course, social dancing can be beautiful to watch. Some dancers develop remarkable technique, musicality, and presence, and there is genuine pleasure in observing that. But the heart of the experience is usually not located in what the audience sees.

It is located in what the dancers feel.

The interesting part is often not the movement itself, but the negotiation happening underneath it. The adjustments, the invitations, the responses, the moments where one person proposes something and the other transforms it into something slightly different. Much of what makes a social dance meaningful is happening in a space that is almost invisible to anyone watching from the outside.

Sometimes I think about it through a different artistic analogy.

The difference feels similar to the difference between watching a carefully scripted theatrical production and watching a great improvisational comedy show.

Both can be excellent.

Both can be artistic.

But the source of the experience is different.

One asks you to admire the execution of something that has been carefully crafted and refined over time. The other invites you to witness something being discovered in real time, complete with surprises, unexpected turns, small mistakes, adjustments, and moments that could never be reproduced exactly the same way again.

That second experience has always fascinated me more.

Maybe that is because I am a composer. Maybe it is because improvisation has always occupied an important place in my musical life. Or maybe it is simply because I enjoy situations where two people are creating something together without fully knowing where it will lead.

Whatever the reason, I gradually realized that what attracted me most to dance belonged much more to the world of improvisation than to the world of performance.

Miami, Salsa, and Understanding What I Was Looking For

Years later, when I moved to Miami to pursue my master’s degree at the Frost School of Music, forró largely disappeared from my life.

At the time, there simply wasn’t an active forró scene there. If I wanted to keep dancing, I would have to find something else.

That was how I ended up taking salsa classes, particularly Cuban salsa and rueda de casino.

I enjoyed many aspects of it. I met interesting people, learned new movement vocabularies, and spent time in dance environments that were energetic and welcoming. In many ways, it served an important purpose during a period when I missed dancing and had very few opportunities to reconnect with the experience I had known in Brazil.

But something never quite clicked.

In rueda de casino, dancers form a circle while someone calls out combinations and everybody executes them together. There is a collective energy to it that many people love, and I could certainly understand why. The room moves together, the patterns become increasingly elaborate, and there is a strong sense of shared participation.

At the same time, I kept feeling that something I valued deeply was missing.

The interaction I loved most was no longer at the center of the experience.

Instead of responding primarily to the person in front of me, I was responding to instructions. Instead of discovering a dance together, we were executing a sequence together.

The distinction may sound subtle, but for me it was significant.

What I missed most was that open-ended conversation that I had found in forró. The feeling that neither person knew exactly what would happen next. The feeling that the dance could change direction at any moment because of a musical phrase, a playful response, a moment of spontaneity, or simply because two people decided to explore a different path together.

What kept pulling me toward dance was not simply movement, rhythm, or learning new patterns. It was the feeling that two people were building something together in real time, responding to each other as much as they were responding to the music.

Forró had given me that feeling early on, and once I recognized how important it was to me, it became difficult not to notice when it was missing.

Eventually, I stopped dancing salsa. Not because it was a bad dance, and certainly not because other people were wrong to love it.

It simply wasn’t feeding the part of dancing that had always fascinated me most.

A Dance in Lisbon

Many years later, after I had already become a teacher, organizer, and festival producer, I experienced a dance that illustrates this idea better than any definition I could offer.

It happened in Lisbon.

I was attending a forró festival in Europe, and by the final night I was completely exhausted. I had spent days teaching, socializing, sleeping very little, and dancing whenever I had a free moment. The festival was coming to an end, and I felt like I had very little energy left.

Throughout the weekend, however, there had been one particular person with whom dancing felt unusually easy. Not because of technique or complexity, but because the conversation worked.

Every time we found each other on the dance floor, the interaction felt natural. There was curiosity, playfulness, musical dialogue, and that rare feeling that both people are listening to the same conversation at the same time.

Over the course of the festival, we kept ending up dancing together again and again.

Late on that final night, somewhere in the middle of the madrugada, we danced once more.

By that point, I think both of us were running mostly on instinct. The fatigue was so strong that it almost created a different state of awareness. The rational mind became quieter. The desire to impress disappeared. The desire to perform disappeared. Even the desire to think disappeared.

I spent most of that dance with my eyes closed.

As far as I can remember, she did too.

From the outside, I suspect the dance looked almost ordinary.

There were no tricks.

No lifts.

No dramatic moments.

No movements designed to attract attention from across the room.

In fact, someone watching might have found it considerably less interesting than many of the dances happening around us.

But inside the dance, the experience felt completely different.

The embrace felt different.

The music felt different.

Small changes in weight felt significant.

Tiny musical responses felt significant.

The conversation became increasingly subtle, almost reduced to its simplest elements.

At some point, it no longer felt like we were trying to create anything. We were simply present inside the same piece of music, responding to it together.

I remember leaving that dance with the feeling that I had just experienced something deeply memorable.

What stayed with me afterward was the realization that almost everything that made the experience meaningful was invisible. Someone observing from across the room would probably have missed most of it, not because they weren’t paying attention, but because the most important part was never happening on the outside.

It was happening inside the experience itself.

Some of the dances I remember most clearly after all these years are not the ones that would have looked most impressive from the outside. They are the ones that lingered afterward, long after the music had ended.

The Paradox of the Viral Videos

This is usually the point where some people become confused.

Today, I have dance videos online that have accumulated hundreds of thousands of views. Some of them circulated widely within the international forró community and reached far more people than I ever imagined when they were recorded.

At first glance, that might seem contradictory.

How can someone who identifies so strongly as a social dancer also be known through videos?

The answer is that most of those videos were never conceived as performances.

They were not choreographies created for a stage. They were not pieces designed around visual impact. Most emerged from workshops, classes, demonstrations, and educational situations. Often, they were recorded immediately after we had spent an hour or two teaching a particular concept, movement, or idea to a group of students.

The dance itself was usually an extension of that process, a way of exploring possibilities and playing with ideas that had just been discussed in class.

Many of those videos are almost entirely improvised. Some were recorded with guest teachers visiting New York. Others with dance partners, assistants, or collaborators. In most cases, what interested me was not creating a polished performance, but exploring what could happen inside that particular conversation.

In that sense, the camera was never the reason for the dance. The dance existed first, and the camera simply documented it.

Sometimes the recording became an educational example. Sometimes it became a memory of a workshop. Sometimes it captured a creative moment that felt worth preserving. Occasionally, those moments resonated with other dancers and ended up reaching a much larger audience than originally intended.

But even when a camera is present, my relationship with the dance itself remains essentially the same.

I am still looking for the same things I was looking for twenty years ago: interaction, curiosity, playfulness, and the feeling that something unexpected might happen in the next musical phrase.

The fact that someone later watches the video does not fundamentally change what I am searching for while I am dancing.

The camera is there.

The conversation is still the point.

Why I Still Call Myself a Social Dancer

After years of dancing, teaching, organizing festivals, creating educational content, and spending time in forró communities across different countries, I feel even more certain about this than I did when I was twenty years old.

What keeps bringing me back to dance is the possibility of interacting.

I remain fascinated by what can happen between two people inside a dance. The conversations that emerge without words. The moments where musicality becomes something shared rather than displayed. The small acts of creativity that appear spontaneously when neither person is entirely sure what the next few seconds will look like.

Looking back, I suspect this is one of the reasons forró captured my attention so completely in the first place.

At its heart, forró emerged as a social experience. It grew in gatherings, parties, communities, and shared musical spaces. Long before it appeared on stages, it existed in living rooms, community halls, dance floors, and celebrations where the boundary between participant and audience barely existed.

Of course, forró can be performed. Beautifully. I have watched performances that I genuinely admired, and I understand why many dancers are drawn toward that path.

But the dances that stayed with me over the years were usually not the ones that looked the most impressive from the outside.

They were the ones where something happened between two people that neither of them could have fully planned: a moment of musical understanding, a shared joke, a subtle response to a phrase in the music, a conversation that lasted only one song and then disappeared forever.

Those moments are impossible to rehearse.

They only exist because two people happened to meet in the same place, listening to the same music, at the same time.

When I think about everything dance has brought into my life - the friendships, the travels, the relationships, the communities, and the memories that remain decades later - I always end up returning to that same idea.

More than anything else, I was never searching for a performance.

I was searching for a conversation.

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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.

More about his work can be found here.