Hey everybody my name is Evgenia but usually people call me Evie and I'm here
today with the incredible Audi MPK. We're going to talk today about I guess
the hottest topic and it has been hot in the past several years - that's
difference between kizomba and urban. Alright so I'm just gonna dive in, Audi
when you first started dancing kizomba were you dancing kizomba or urban?
When I first started it was more of the style of what we call today urban
Of course at the time "kizomba fusion" as they were using. I don't necessarily like this term.
More also then came "French style" that people are using. Don't necessarily like this term either,
but I guess now that is called urban yeah kind of started with
urban. I have been dancing urban for 4 years and kizomba for 2 years so
I later learned kizomba, 2 years later. So you started out with urban, but I
know that you are really good at dancing kizomba as well and you're not only
able to dance both but you enjoy dancing both so can you kind of comment, I guess the next
question would be: What is urban and what is kizomba? Definitely kizomba is the
cherished dance that comes from Angola that was in its original
style of the way they dance in Angola and I don't want to get into details of how they dance and what you tend to hear
that's it's danced in a circular way or the body movement called Ginga and other things. For me
I understood kind of like to be brief in answering your question. I understood
that you had kizomba from Angola, you had maybe let's just say first
generation of people actually learned kizomba, but then because of
the music change and them dancing the dance that they learned to that music
and adapting it to the music, it started to change the way the dance originally is
and also your dancing it on different music to where naturally as time went on
you had maybe generation 1 people maybe dancing kizomba with a lot of elements of
kizomba and then maybe few elements of I guess their background into the
dance - to where generations went it was maybe
less of the foundational kizomba kizomba aspects and more of their background
and more of this evolution to where maybe we go generation 3 to where
now you can clearly clearly look and see urban is nothing really close visually to actual kizomba. So you would argue it's a separate dance?
I would say that they are separate dances but in a sense different styles, which is like wierd
to say that you're choosing both but for me they're different dances because one
it's danced to completely different music, danced on a completely different way
Musicality is gonna be different. The understanding, background culture of
this is gonna be different. I've done a test in my city
Dallas showing 2 people that are not in the community of kizomba, and I'm asking
them: "Look at this video of this person dancing semba and this person dancing
urban kiz and they both clearly said: "Ok it looks different but
it looks like they have maybe a tango hold...I don't know..."
But it's interesting, and with no music at that as well and they can clearly see the difference
so yes it's so different to that extent that you
in my opinion have to call it a different dance but then it's hard and I understand
why some people kind of disagree because also it seems like it's a different
style because it's so many elements that I personally use and other instructors,
dancers use so many elements from kizomba as well and you kind of put them
in your urban kiz that you don't feel like when the music changes when you're
dancing urban and now you're dancing kizomba that you changed so much that
when you talk to some follows I've spoken to they feel when that
change happens from someone dancing urban, DJ changes the music now it's
kizomba, semba and whatnot, they don't feel like you know personally they have
changed the way that they're following in the dance that they're dancing it's not
like they now have music change and now they're dancing Brazilian zouk or
music changed, now they're dancing salsa. There's a lot of elements that can blend over so
different dance but yet in some sense very, very similar. So would you say that maybe
the foundation is the same or maybe these two styles, they kind of belong
to one family? I would think if it's, if urban is a completely separate dance,
then it would be called not "urban kizomba", but something like
a totally separate word, right? Definitely, I agree in a sense that I would be in favor
that it's a different name other than kizomba, I think that definitely it's an evolution
of kizomba. So in some sense in my opinion it
belongs under like this family of dances that belong to kizomba
but you can belong you know under the family but they're very different
you know dances. In my opinion based on the way I dance, and some instructors dance
they have a very similar like foundation you can use but they can also go far
away. Let's just say, let's just take Enah, he's kind of like on this end and
then we have you know kizomba or semba on this end. We can say that maybe
Enah, the way he dances he doesn't use much of the kizomba foundation,
kizomba elements we can say, but you have this middle space that we tend to call
whatever is outside of kizomba, urban kiz and you have dancers that
can dance in a similar way of kizomba, body leading, I can insert the basic
steps, virgula, retroceso and I can do all of this in my urban and have
like when I teach the suave, the Ginga, these basic foundational elements but
then do urban kiz steps which then makes it seem that it's in relation to kizomba
even more so but definitely for me it's different than kizomba. So if you imagine
this grid, right Enah's on one side and then say a true Angolan, who's been dancing kizomba
since he was five, where are you on this grid? It's an interesting grid because I feel that
like if this is kizomba it's almost like as soon as you cross this line you
are now into the urban kiz section so it's more or less in my opinion maybe
we have like a section with a line, a section with a line, so you have 3 sections
Kizomba what it is, as soon as you cross the line, you're no longer dancing kizomba, in my
opinion it has elements but it's different I would be in this middle
section because I still love, that's why I love to dance kizomba, semba as
well because it's elements that are in these dances that I love to do that
I just enjoy doing, so just because I am interpreting the way I'm dancing to say
urban style music I can still do virgula in urban and retroceso in urban etc.
body lead and the suave, Ginga, movement different things. I can
put this in my urban, I like to do this because I like the feeling that
maybe then we put Enah in this third section where he has taken away a
lot of those kizomba elements. And invented a lot of new cool moves. So how would you comment about the tension that
we all know exists and I guess primarily in social media
there is criticism of you know and it's going both ways
kizomba dancers versus urban and the other way around
now how does that make you feel? With the tension and some of the you know
you see it on Facebook it's kind of yes, it definitely shies some people away or
becomes like tiring but honestly in my opinion, yes things can go too far or
whatnot I'm not speaking on how far things go
but the letting things be known for what they are and really getting the point
across to people and of course people who have
different backgrounds and understanding, different opinions on like
everything. I think that it's really good that the war sort of happened because it
needed to be known that how they dance kizomba in Angola is like this is
kizomba. What evolves from this to what has been popular in Europe or not
other that came from France is not kizomba and maybe you don't
understand what it's like for a dance to be cherished by culture, for them to have
a war and go through hard times, and this dance kind of brought them happiness and brought them
closer together it has a huge impact on their culture and
it is danced a certain way and then someone of course which naturally happens
evolution definitely being from a different country you can learn it and after you
put your own background, your own mix, spice on it, it changes but you don't
in my opinion want to call that kizomba, because I would never want two years later
someone to see what we call now "urban kiz" but let's just say that you call it "kizomba"
I wouldn't want anyone to see that dance and say: "Hey I learned kizomba", then you show them an actual kizomba they even say: "aah..I don't know about that's not kizomba, what I learned is this over here..."
So I really am in agreeance for the name change. I think kizomba
being as a word I don't like "kizomba Fusion" because you use the word "kizomba"
I don't like voila "urban kizomba" because you use the word "kizomba"
Of course I understand that the "kiz" is essentially "kizomba" but at least for a search
engine for something like this when we put "urban kiz" okay I see maybe because
it comes from evolution of kizomba but in my opinion urban kiz especially it one word
"urbankiz", never will a search engine bring up kizomba, you know? Oh, ok, but if you type in "kizomba"
90% chance you'll actually end up seeing something that's urban. So just to
summarize: it's very important to get and pass on a clear message and to
I guess properly name these 2 movements or these 2 dances however you put it
Imagine I'm from Angola and I grew up
there and I danced kizomba all my life and then one day I'm in Paris and someone tells me: "He dances kizomba too..." or "There's a social going on.."
and I go into this club I can imagine what shock I'd be in and
I'll be like: "Why are you calling this kizomba?" so we really need to respect,
show some respect for the culture. Now you mentioned in your workshops that if
you have a good kizomba foundation you can actually, and you want to learn urban you
can easily build up on that but you can't go the other way around. Could you tell
me more about that? Why is that? For me in my urban I teach the
foundation of kizomba because it gives you and starts you off with this for me
I like the understanding of like feeling is very important in the dance like subtlety
is very important, musicality is very important rather than urban seems
and could be classified as a dance of tricks and show so I like this
foundation and seeing that kizomba is the original and urban kiz is an
evolution you can always take from the original of something and add different
things from the evolution but for me in my opinion you know what to have
original of something that was perfectly fine as it was as the original and of
course for things to live on you need evolution and of course naturally when
definitely in dance, a country Angola is dancing a dance naturally
if you take Americans, Europeans and they dance the same dance, they don't have African
culture, they don't have African movement. It's gonna naturally look like an evolution of something different
so what I mean by you can't go back the other way is when you have kizomba
and you have that evolution you don't have to take things from the evolution and
try to put in the original when it was fine as it was as an original. But that
is what I would say as a message of like the mentality needs to be that
way but I always encourage people to dance
everything, learn all of it because definitely for me, started with urban as
soon as I started learning kizomba, 1 - you start to have a better appreciation
for it, learn about the history, that it's a beautiful culture
then you learn elements from kizomba that if you feel like it's a different dance you learn elements of it here
but if you've just studied urban, you just have urban but if you can take elements of that and put it in your urban
you just become better,
you're just adding them to your basket, so now you understand the subtlety, the suave, the Ginga, body movement
Was it hard for you because you started out with urban? Before I learned urban I was already dancing African dances
They all give me different feelings so when you play kizomba I have this nice
flow, I can hum the songs, I like the songs, the feeling can be soft, subtle
When it's semba I feel like I can clown, bring that African side out, when
it's like let's just even say urban kiz and going into that section in
realm of what I know more if it's an rnb remix, kind of chill
I'm able to have this soft feeling, maybe dance on the lyrics, what I really like
then maybe I go into the mentality of tricks
steps, bam-bam-bam, dancing on tempo then when it's tarraxo it's like a
monster, a beast comes out into you and gives you this energy and boom
and ta-ta-ta like the base so it all gives me different feelings, I enjoy having to change
through a social. And the music basically dictates how you dance and you're not
limited to just one style. Exactly.
Sometimes one of the other accusations against urban is that it's a very stiff
dance. So it has a pretty stiff frame, you walk in grids, you make 90 degree,
180 degree turns. With it being firm and strict and very precise once someone gets to
a certain level I'm sure it corresponds and relates
better to urban music. Definitely I would agree, definitely what you said about it's all
interpretation of music in my opinion you have urban I mean you have like
popping and the hip-pop like jabba walking style moving this is like
stiff you need tension in your body to pop, to do different things
Salsa even is, you need the tension, you look at dancers and sometimes they look
stiff. But I don't think this is a knock or should be a criticism of a dance
because you need it to dance in this particular way but what it then goes
back to what can help it is you by adding or learning body movement or
tarraxinha or like on the kizomba side. Implementing this, it does nothing but
make it in my opinion better and you kind of need the grid sort of
North-South-East-West sort of things in the turns as you mentioned
because it gives it like this clean look, this precision. You won't to say it's robotic?
Different people dance differently with different styles, different levels so if
you have never danced before and you have no body movement, you don't have anything
you start learning kizomba and they teach you that feeling, body movement
and stuff, then you start learning urban kiz, what you tend to get is people teach
you the steps that you need the tension in order to follow the same way if you
just start salsa, the same way you have kizomba dancers that dance salsa, you
need that tension so if you as I said take some of the other
dances and some other elements and you kind of mix them, it can help the dance. Where
we tend to see some instructors, they maybe dance stiff and it looks like it's
robotic. This is like their way of dancing of course their way of dancing can
affect a lot of people but for me, we can even mention Laurent & Adeline,
the way they dance as an example you have body movement, you have feeling, you don't want to feel
robotic, but I don't think the dancing on the grid makes it feel robotic. It can be smooth at the same time. Exactly.
For me it makes it precise and like a clean look so this doesn't mean that I
don't do virgula or retroceso or even estrela and go
at different angles and do this but for me it's like when I start in a way and
I let's say open a follow, I want to if I'm facing North
open her West and it looks like it's on a clean path rather than I'm facing North
and I'm gonna open my follow and maybe it's visually looks for me you know
in my opinion a lack of technique because rather than opening like directly West you
open at an angle and for me it looks like it's a lack of technique
Can I ask what your educational background is because if I were to guess it would be
statistics, mathematics... Exactly, I like math, I like
finance, numbers. I have an accounting background, an accounting degree
I was in accounting before I was blessed to start traveling for dance. So my last question
would be how do you differentiate yourself from other instructors? Hard for
me to say what differentiates me from anyone else, I feel like I can
differentiate from a lot of people and some people may have similar
outlooks but as an instructor what differentiates me is definitely teaching
concepts, technique, foundation, steps, all of it as being MPK
voila. Teaching musicality, it's huge because everything depends on the
music you start dancing because of the music and then not only do you just need
to hear the music you need to like capture an energy from the song and
interpret this to your follow and need to dance with the music and I
feel that not to speak on other instructors but I feel for me I'm one of
I guess the few that really put a focus on being musical but you need the
techniques and the foundation to be able to
achieve or complete some of the tasks here so it's sort of like building blocks of
to really be able to understand to be that. So that's what I'm
saying that kind of differentiates me. Well thank you so much! Merci beaucoup!
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