Getting into Kizomba

I struggled with Kizomba. I'd already been learning Cuban Salsa and Bachata for a while when I went to that first Kizomba class. Most of us there were Salsa dancers, and were told that we were learning a dance that was decidedly African, rather than Latin, so there would be marked differences.

Something still felt off. The first thing I had to get over was close physical contact with people I either didn't know very well, or that I'd come to think of as friends. That's still not easy for me. At least a part of my difficulty with Kizomba is nervousness. For some reason, I just wasn't connecting with the dance. Occasionally, a song would be played which was somehow easier for me, but I didn't understand why that would be.

When I dance, I try to picture where the dance comes from, and where it would be danced. With Cuban Salsa, or Bachata, I may be in a bar or a club in the North of England or Wales, but I mentally place myself in a club in Cuba or the Dominican Republic, or maybe I put myself there emotionally. I've never been to these places, but the feeling of being there is what's important. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone, but at least it makes sense to me.

I have difficulty remembering sequences of movement, and I'm not the most technically gifted dancer, but I try to connect with the feeling of the dance.

I couldn't place Kizomba. I bought a few compilation albums, to try to get a sense of what the music was saying to me, but it didn't seem to match up with the dance. Then, I started listening to an internet radio station which plays this kind of music.

A lot of what I heard was similar to what I'd heard before, and this placed Kizomba in a city at night, which didn't feel right to me. Some of the music, though, had quite a different feel.

I didn't really know the difference between Kizomba, Tarraxinha and Semba at the time. I assumed that what I was hearing was another style of music, but I tried dancing the basic Kizomba I knew to it. This was where I finally connected with the dance. The music gave me the feeling of dancing in the open air, in a town at the edge of a desert, as the sun was going down. Is that Kizomba? I honestly don't know, but the imagery gave me a feeling that I transmitted into the movements, and it felt right to me.

A video by a highly respected Kizomba instructor stated that most of what we hear as Kizomba music in this part of the world is actually Ghetto Zouk. I'll admit that a smile came to my face when I heard that. There had been a valid reason for me not being able to connect the music with the dance.

I'm not for one minute saying that there's anything wrong with Ghetto Zouk. It's likely that, if I danced that style, I'd connect with the music in that way. It's also likely to be the style of music I have to dance to in Kizomba rooms, but that's okay. I know how Kizomba should feel now, even though I'm still not that competent, and I still get nervous about the close contact.

What bothers me is that I bought Kizomba compilations which actually contain little or no Kizomba music. To me, that feels disrespectful to the genre, and a little disingenuous of the people producing the compilations. Getting my hands on real Kizomba music seems to be difficult.