In this segment of the Warsaw Zouk Festival 2024 off‑balance class, instructors Raiza and Bruno demonstrate and explain key techniques for Zouk followers. Raiza introduces the "compass" exercise, a one‑leg turn that builds isolation and upper‑body twist, explaining its application for followers and occasional use for leaders. She then guides participants through a hip‑stop drill, emphasizing turning solely with the upper body while keeping the hips still to protect the knees and improve lead‑follow dynamics. Throughout the class, Raiza offers practical cues—such as using a mirror to check hip rotation—and expresses gratitude to the early‑morning participants, highlighting the community spirit of the festival. The tone is instructional with supportive, appreciative remarks.
I think we always say that in the moment that we don't feel this anymore, we start dancing. What is going on?
I'm not ready! Sorry, I'm just, I'm just prepping a song that usually disappears when I'm about to play it.
So while he's preparing, I already showed some exercises that we had for the movement in the class. One, the first exercise was the compass, where you turn on top of one leg. The compass is something that we use not only for this movement but for all the movements that I do, especially in the followers' back. The leaders, we use sometimes in styling or to do like double turns, but it's not required for all the movements. But for the followers, it's mainly the way that we use for everything. So you have one leg in front, we have the isolation on the twist in the upper body, and then you turn always towards the front leg. So I prepare the upper body to the opposite side And then I turn towards the front leg. If I'm turning towards the other leg, what I normally use is both legs on the floor, so there is no need to have the compass. Yeah, so from here we can do quarter turn, we can do half turn, and then full turn. Yeah, uh, the other thing that we had, it was— Ah, the exercise over here where you stop the hips And then having the turns on the chest just to make sure that you don't move the hips. It's gonna be a small movement. If you see that it's really big, probably it's because you're also twisting the hips, which is not good for your knees. So I would suggest you to— that you have to stop in front of the mirror and really make sure that there is no hip rotation. Yeah? Just on the upper body. And this will help both of us, followers to do the turn and leaders to lead that idea of going around and having more impulse for the follower to drop. Yeah. Okay, now I need my partner. Oh my God! That's what I did earlier. While everyone is coming, uh, I want to say thank you guys, because after the day you normally get too emotional to say anything. But thank you so much for all of you to be here, to wake up for the classes, because I know it's kind of early, but, uh, to support such a nice event, uh, we organized, being the classes, being the social. And thank you for the smiles, for the conversations. Thank you. Ahead. So it's really important for us to be here, as Bruno mentioned in the other class. We are really happy, and yeah, thank you so much.
So the first version of the movement we did, we open into this type of virajinha. Remember that this movement could be done simply in a lunge, right? So you could do a lunge in the way you already do And then shift the weight and pass to the other side and have the same result, right? So going into the same direction. That's the— that was the very first simple way. Yeah. Um, you could do the same thing and go into the arm lock, which was the last one. So going into a lunge, rising without the stretch first, going into the arm lock. No problem. Or you could do the same thing to practice, and as you rise, stretch. Yeah, so that was the version without the off-axis contacts. Then you got the off-axis contacts, which was the very first one. We only went behind and open, same. Simple exit. And then we did this with the unblock too, so same rotation, travel, and then the same water. And then the very last one we did with the head motion and the off-axis, so starting same way, rising And going into the unlock and exiting with origami position. Check this movement. Yeah, there's a version that we did not get to do, but it could be done, is starting the virajina already with the hand on the side. I'm going to switch the direction so you can see. I will step, I already stretching and have the hand on the side. I want to have this compression, the head flipping through the front as I create a pose for the compass. So if you get to the armlock in the same way, yeah? If you do urake tsukizada, I think that's the name, uh, it could be the same effect. So same thing, you go on the side, you could usually do like this and go front. You could have the same feeling to go back. Yes, you're good. How it is?
