ForAll - Share, Learn and Collaborate Dance Ideas Socially

This group is for everyone interested in learning to dance or wanting to share dance ideas. Open to all skill levels the goal is to create a cool environment and community for people passionate about individual or partner dance.

Want to learn how to dance with your partner in a club? Want to pick up individual dance ideas from others as passionate as you? Want to just have fun dancing? Then come and join us!

Here’s a bit more detail:

I’m Matthew. For the past 18 months I’ve worked hard learning about a cool Brazilian dance called Forro. I’ve attended a great dance school for the past year and people who know me will tell me you rarely see me away from the dance floor - even before I started partner dancing. Now I want to introduce these concepts and help encourage and teach people to dance to whatever music they love.

I’m starting to a not for profit project and hiring some amazing studio space with the dream of creating a little dance school in the future to help encourage people to learn about dance in partners or individually. I’m inviting people of all dance backgrounds to come in and enjoy share and learn dance ideas collaboratively and hoping to create a social group where we can take these ideas out of the studio wherever we want and party.

If you dance Forro, Zouk, Bachata, Kizomba, West Coast Swing, Cuban Salsa or any similar types of dance we’ll easily be able to work together to create new ideas and share them with other group members. If you like these as a styles you’ll love what I’ve got to share with you. I’ve been working with friends for the past few months to take what we use in Forro to dance to all types of music and so far it’s worked perfect. I'd like to create an environment for people to share ideas from different styles of dance with me.

The Dance Lab

At the centre point of the project is our Dance Lab. The concept is to have shared dance studio space with people working individually or in small groups sharing different ideas. For those wanting to share individual dance ideas, I’d love to invite you to join and share this space. Learning and sharing ideas about how to dance individually also forms a basic part of this group. I also believe that to be able to dance as a partner, you have to be able to dance on your own.

The current format allows all members of the group to contribute by taking centre stage to share a creative exercise or by dividing the area into small groups. Even if you want to just work on an idea in your own little space with a partner, if theres enough space we'll give a place to do it. We're inviting people to bring very simple ideas and exercises to enable participants to create their own cool dance movements and sharing our own ideas. If you’ve got a creative dance idea or something you want to share as part of the group we’d love to have you join.

Lastly, If you’re just as frustrated as I am about the costs of hiring a professional dance studio, this could be a perfect solution because all Dance Lab group sessions will be held in some amazing studio environments and provided you happy to work as part as a team, open for all. 

Everything about this project is about thinking creatively while learning - not being taught specific movements. I'd even like to cross other boundaries and open the group to people of interests related to understanding body movement - for example taking ideas and exercises from martial arts to explore arm movements or yoga about posture. 

What style of dance I’ll be bringing to the group:

I’ve learned a Brazilian dance called Forro from an excellent school called Pe Descalco in Brazil. Juzinha, Cesar, Valmir and Milena are some of the teachers I’ve been working with for the past year. Here are some videos of them to give you an idea of the origins of the partner dance concept I’ll be bringing to the group but adapting to different music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLS_86URyLI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0fjEGzmMf8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1zwb6beDRU

I thought I’d share this West Coast Swing Dance video to demonstrate similarities and how adaptable the scheme is to other music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWO_bFvs_8o