It's been a while since I've posted here. I'll admit it's been hard to keep up with all the traveling I've been doing this summer, both for work and for plesure. I'll be dividing what I write accordingly between this blog for pleasure and my business blog with Mezclada. As I write this, I'm sitting in a plane on my wya to Lyon, France. Soemthign I could never have anticipated.
Today I want to take you back to July 20th-24th for the Neo Kizomba Festival in Austin, Texas. My first ever dance festival of its kind, and to be honest, my first rela formal introduction to kizomba, a dance with roots in Africa that was later popularized in the 80s in France.
Most readers at this point probably know that I'm a fan of dancing. So investing in a festival such as this one seemed like a natural next step to take my dancing to the next level. Little did I know that I would find myself dancing in the pool, awake until 1 a.m., and comforted by how much Spanish I heard when venturing out of the conference hotel for food.
In a nutshell, I immersed myself in 4 days of workshops covering all kinds of elements of the dance - from the basics to some advanced moves to understanding a bit about musicality. I felt completely at home and inspired being surrounded by so many people who share my love for physical touch and as a form of self-expression and creativity. This indeed is a theme I'm starting to see in my journey of personal and professional growth. Lean into joy and the money will come, they say. And for me, that means leaning into creativity in all forms! DAnce, language, design, facilitation, writing, and more.
On the first day, I went to bed early even though most people attended the first night of dancing. I had been up since 4 a.m. to catch my flights, so knowing what to do about my chronic fatigue, I felt it would be best to take it easy. A seasoned kizomba fest attendee even recommended for first-timers that they pace themselves when attending the social dances at night. The schedule for the event was crazy. Workshops from 11-5 or six in the evening, a break, then pool party until 9, then social dancing with live DJs until 6 a.m.
I attended a yoga class, which was much needed. And later had to give my feet a rest when I started to overdo it. Some highlights and takeaways:
1. People's dancing styles and touch are like a fingerprint. Everyone's is completely unique to them. And getting to attend workshops in rotation style was such a cool way to get exposed to everyone's dance style.
2. Don't be afraid to give yourself down time at events like this, especially if you're an introvert.
3. Dancing with others who are confident can actually help you learn a lot about your own insecurities. I realized that I have more so much more to give and offer and contribute, but a lot of that has to do with how comfortable you are with your partner and also your own skin.
4. Every dance is like improv. I love being a follower because it forces me to get out of the driver's seat and pay attention to what the other person is doing. You can't think and plan ahead, which it what so much of my life revolves around. So being forced to just be present and responsive to the person in front of me is like a breath of fresh air.
5. In an ideal world, you get to take vacation time during a festival like this instead of having to squeeze in a few hours of work every now and then. I had HW for an entrepreneurship academy, which was hard, to say the least, but I still finished everything I needed to.
6. Accept what you know (or don't know) and trust that you'll soak up what you need to like a sponge. I'm grateful for all the years of dancing other styles of Latin dance and how that prepared me to pick up the basics of kizomba pretty quickly. I had several people tell me could tell that I had dance experience, which was pretty awesome and unexpected. I also love that urban kizomba mixes in hip hop, so people have so much fun and it's unpredictable what people will do.
As I go into the rest of this year of continued travel, one thing I know for sure is that no matter where I land in the end, I want to be part of a dance community of some kind. I'm very inspired to find a place with a hip hop scene that teaches people how to do choreographed songs like the stuff I've seen on YouTube. We shall see what I can find the rest of this year...I welcome your recommendations for spots in India and Australia!
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