Claudio & Monica social dancing Zouk at The SSC 2009

The search for what makes a choreo great goes on.

During the congress I wasn’t dancing I went to all the parties, shows and a few workshops, so I got a bit tired. This thing of having a fractured bone with a constant pain also added to my feeling exhausted. So although I had planed to write on Saturday and Sunday mornings I ended up sleeping instead. The dancers among my readers will understand me well, the people that go clubbing too.

Therefore, I now have three nights of shows in my head, I will have to use them as I go, forget about the linearity of the tale and just enjoy the links in the thinking.

I realised that, as I said before, the music is essential but there are catches to it. For example, if you get a great music but doesn’t use it well it is as bad as if you didn’t get a great song at all. Look for music with ups and downs, breaks and strong beats, something dramatic always adds flair to the performance. And a good choreographer uses it.

One of the guys in the dance world in Sydney that is a master of this and one of my favourite partners in the dance floor is Claudio Gomes from Step Up. When I was just getting there with my Zouk dancing I went to a 101°C Party and danced with him. It was one of “the good ones”, a perfect dance with no lost leads and the perfect following of his movements.

When we finished one of my fellow dancers, J. Gray, came to me to say:

‘I never got Zouk until tonight. I saw you dancing with the Brazilian Teacher and finally got it. It was amazing.’

And he commented on the following of the beats of the music.

So that is what Claudio and Monica with their Formation Team performed on Sunday and brought a wonderful example of following the song. They chose a great music, added a charming costume and did a beautiful piece using every single beat of the song.

Once again I will proclaim not to be neutral. Zouk is my favourite dance and this year, the shows I liked the best were the ones of this style. I know it is the Sydney Salsa Congress, so Salsa is in the spotlight but, no one who saw Kadu and Larissa, and Mafie Zouker, will tell me they were not incredible!

Kadu & Larissa Gafieira’s performance at The SSC 2009

I couldn’t even describe how amazing those shows were, but of course you are talking some of the best in the world here.

I’m trying to muster words to describe. It was like an earthquake or a volcano explosion you “witness”.

By the end of each of the choreos, I felt like saying only one thing: “Please do it again! Please, please, please, let me see it once more? Can I get the video right now? Can I take it home?”

I felt like Scooby Doo when he got one of those dog’s cookies in the cartoon, I felt like I jut had a treat, felt like floating in the air, eyes closed, hugging myself.

Larissa must be a demi­goddess with divine powers, like the ones from mythology made from the intervention of one of the pagan gods.

She is so smooth, so liquid on stage and yet so perfect in her movements that it is indescribable. With partners that do what they do, Kadu and Mafie Zouker, there was nothing more amazing.

Larissa & Tania / Mafie Zouker / Mafie Zouker & Marcia Pinheiro dancing at the SSC 2009

Kadu and Larissa performed on Saturday and I went home not with the image of them in my mind but with the blur of incredible sensations they caused in me.

Then on Sunday Mafie Zouker took her, in a choreography created and rehearsed in only one week together, I’m not even sure they had met ever before then, I don’t think so.

He may be a bit of a snob, but Mafie Zouker is still one of the best zoukers in the world. His body movement is so sexy girls feel like melting, guys feel like imitating him. Putting him to dance with Larissa was not fair to the rest of the world. Then you add Kadu from the middle of the routine onwards and you get the shivers. [Choreo here]

I cannot wait to see it again, and that will be only on video. That is why this congress we cannot miss, even with a faulty wing. Things that happen here will not be replicated ever in any other place. The chances of getting these three together again on stage are very small indeed and even if they did, this choreo is unique made for this place alone. Completely unique.

22 Orble Votes