Bachata community vs Brazilian Zouk community

I feel conflicted on this one.

As I am building the new business model for the local dance community, I began talking to people. As many different angles as possible, not just my own point of view, and to talk about plans for the future. (The why is in my last post.)

Last night I met up with a Bachata teacher. We talked about growing communities, dynamics, and shared our ideas. The good, the bad and the ugly, and the problems we have both seen and experienced.

To be clear, none of this is word for word. It is my recollection and understanding of the conversation, written in my own words.

Then the topic went where I wanted it to go. Why is Bachata growing so fast compared to Brazilian Zouk?

What the Bachata community does

The Bachata community expands, and it does not matter if event days conflict.

Their teachers focus on building in different regions within the city of London, which is more convenient for people to join their classes. They do not carry the mindset of a night “belonging” to anyone, or the taboo that starting one splits the community.

They focus on expansion. On trying to make the dance accessible and fun from day 1.

Then I asked about Brazilian Zouk

Many new Brazilian Zouk dancers want to learn head movements and the other advanced moves.

They saw it on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, wherever. It is the flow of the head movements that seems to captivate them, and that is what they want to learn.

And there is a chicken and egg problem sitting in the middle of it. Leaders feel they need to learn head movements because Followers keep throwing them. Followers say it is the Leaders who keep forcing head movements on them. So which came first?

So I asked him. How do you cope with students wanting to learn dangerous movements that require years of training, not days or weeks?

I explained how Brazilian Zouk is like any other dance style. There is a foundation you need to build from the bottom up, not top down. I wrote about this before, the pyramid of time and effort spent, 4 body sections worked from the ground upwards with head and neck sat right at the top (I drew that up back in 2017).

There is no safe way of teaching head movements to a bunch of beginners who are only there to learn head movements, thinking that is all there is to Brazilian Zouk. The foundation has to be laid first, because you build it in layers from the ground up. Without it, none of it makes any sense.

His answer, and I could not argue against it

Well… if they are there wanting to learn head movements, no matter what you do they will find a way to learn it, or copy it badly anyway. So just teach it, with the caveat of its dangers.

In the Bachata community they teach what the students want or need to quickly get them dancing in socials, because they will find a way to copy it either way. So do not fight it.

Honestly, this is not the first time I have heard that. I have heard the same argument from other Brazilian Zouk teachers.

It is a fair argument. I can’t argue against it!

Last week I wrote that we cannot dumb it down any more than it already is. Then I sat with someone for an evening. I wasn’t there to argue, I was there to listen.

Where my conscience sits

I am still conflicted, but curious what everyone else thinks.

As a community builder, I do not know if I could live with a clear conscience knowing someone injured themselves badly, with a life long injury, because some newbie badly executed something they learned from me. Just because everyone else is teaching it.

But again, we should be treating everyone as adults, and they are held responsible for their own safety choices.

But what if that safety extends to another person? The person you are dancing with.

It is like careless driving. The person who most likely gets hurt or injured isn’t just you.

I know that one. I injured my back twice in a single month when I first moved back to London over 10 years ago, where followers threw surprise cambrés out of the blue (no warning, nothing) and I instinctively tried to catch them as they were falling, since they did not know how to hold their own weight with the right techniques.

Alternatively, continue standing my ground on this, let them go wild and copy if they want to copy, that is on them. But it should not be taught to beginners. Fullstop.

The friction problem and scaling issues

His continuing vision is to make learning the Bachata dance as frictionless as possible. Where beginners do not feel like they need 6 months to feel confident at the dance.

Even though it does take 3 to 5 years if training 2-3 times per week for a non-experienced dancer to be decent at Brazilian Zouk. For clarity, I’m talking about complete beginners with no previous dance or musical experience.

So how can Brazilian Zouk reduce this friction?

Having fun, and not caring too much about techniques. That is the route where you just teach moves, and it takes much less to understand the dance and its rules and techniques. Not every teacher needs to be as knowledgeable either, so then you have more teachers who are able to teach the moves. And once there is enough mass, then you deal with the problems and refinements for those who want further training how to control their bodies. The more knowledgeable teachers can focus on the further development offering additional technical deep dive classes, private classes, workshops, coaching & mentorship for anyone who wants to be better than mediocre.

That is a possibility and makes logical sense to deal with the current scaling issues.

Being a nerd, here’s a nerdy metaphor. It’s a bit like AI slop, where you can create beautiful looking apps in one day that look great, but deep down inside, the backend, code structures, calculations, mechanics and workflow are just a complete mess, and engineers know it will break if used for production. haha

Over to you

I have so many questions for everyone, because it will shape where we plan to take this.

Should Brazilian Zouk go down this path that prioritises growth?

Do you have suggestions how to get a steady stream of new beginners so the dance community can grow?

More importantly, how do we retain beginners so they stay long enough and are not put off by the steep learning curve that comes with learning Brazilian Zouk?

And beginners who started learning Brazilian Zouk, what made you stop? (Be honest! We are listening and trying to make it better.) I have had conversations with many dancers before and the mention of “creepy” dancers came up many times. Is that true? Obviously there are more than one reason, but I’d like to understand what are the main reasons for our high turnover rate.

Any other thoughts and considerations on this topic, throw them at me or find me to talk about it. I’m listening.