WHAT WILL YOU LEARN IN THE WORKSHOP
Olga and Fernando will introduce you into the world of the Zouk Atoms. As a leader you will learn to think and dance the basics from a new point of view, giving to your dance a fresh air of creativity. For the followers it will be the perfect exercise to sharpen your follow skills because you will train your body to go in any direction even doing head movements.
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The Zouk Atoms Intensive will take place two days before the Zouk Island Festival. It will be held on a beautiful location on Koh Phangan and it will be two days with on each day two workshop of two hours. Below you can find a description of each workshop.
Day 1, part 1
FOOTWORK: EXERCISE WITH THE FIRST 4 ATOMS
Using four different footwork patterns we will learn how to dance them in new and creative ways, learning the vocabulary and the grammar of the Zouk Atoms.
Day 2, part 1
NEW ATOMS: MEETING THE INVERTED LATERAL
The Zouk Atoms open a new understanding of the zouk basics with a lot of interesting possibilities. We will take a look at it, using the concept of contra body movement and the „inverted lateral“ as examples.
Day 1, part 2
HEADWORK: CONNECTING FRAME WITH FOOTWORK & HEAD MOVEMENTS
Probably one of the biggest challenges of leading and following head movements is to understand that the same frame is leading both, the footwork and the headwork. In this workshop we will go deeper into this idea.
Day 2, part 2
INVERTED LATERAL WITH HEAD MOVEMENTS
The Zouk Atoms follow the philosophy that we can add head movements on the top of any footwork and do this in very different ways. After learning the „inverted lateral“ it’s time to dance it with head movements.
ABOUT THE ZOUK ATOMS TECHNIQUE
The Zouk Atoms Technique is a combination of four different techniques:
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Footwork and the structure of the Zouk Atoms. A Zouk Atom is a basic footwork pattern of three steps for the follower. The structure of the Zouk Atoms shows us which are the different basic patterns that we can dance and how to combine them fluently.
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Headwork. The technique for the headwork allows us to dance head movements on the top of any footwork.
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Leading Technique: The Leading Technique has a strong focus on the idea of invitation: How the leader invites the hips (footwork) and the chest (headwork) of the follower in order to create new movements.
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Follower Technique: The Follower Technique is based on the idea of „universal follower“, a follower that knows how to keep the full body connected and can go in any direction.
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Check out this example on YouTube of the first ideas to understand the Zouk Atoms.
