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Psiu! Forró Festival Berlin 2016

Berlin – the Place to Celebrate Brazilian Dances for the 4th Time

January 28th, 2016
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A workshop will take place as part of the festival with an intimate atmosphere and a limited number of participants in order to ensure effective learning and friendly parties, with the aim of raising awareness for the roots of forró and to bring different styles closer together at the same time. That is why the program includes traditional forró (universitário) and some other Brazilian dances, such as frevo, samba de gafieira, coco and samba no pé.

Forró Festival will take place in Berlin at the end of this month, from 28th – 31st January. It will begin with the opening party on Thursday and continue with an interesting program over the following three days. RED Ballroom is also one of the festival locations, where dance events will be held on Friday, 29th of January!     

Forró is a traditional couples dance from Northeast Brazil. The word itself refers to folk dances in general, and nowadays the term is used to indicate a summary of rhythms as Baião, Xote, Pé de Serra and Forró de Marcha. Actually there are many ways to dance forró - very sensually, closely embraced, cheek to cheek – it depends on the area of Brazil. The rhythm varies as well and creates an atmosphere where people can enjoy gathering together and having fun. 

Samba de gafieira falls within elegant Brazilian saloon dances. With its roots in Africa and the name for the place where the sambistas dance to live music which has its origins in Europe, it is a dance with many different aspects. Swing, dance steps, creativity, improvisation and playing the music and rhythm, those all are components of this elegant dance. It can also be called samba a dois, which means samba between two, or samba de salão, which refers to saloon samba. A little different is Samba no Pé, which is a solo dance. But people usually dance in groups and comunicate with each other through different samba steps instead of words.  

Another important part of Brazilian dancing culture is Frevo. It was developed by transforming capoeira movements, which were used for threats and fighting between competing groups. In order to end the violence, police pursued the capoeristas, who reacted in a smart way by using umbrellas instead of knives and presented capoeira as dance movements. Umbrella movements are also a part of the dance. 

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References and Links

News from Berlin
Marina Pejič, Berlin Global