On September 19th 2015 New York City Zouk community along with thousands of other Zoukers all over the world celebrated International Zouk Day by performing the flash mob choreography on the streets of our city. What a party it was! We were joined by dancers from New Jersey, Canada and even Sweden, and danced at the landmark NYC locations, raising awareness and sharing the love for our beautiful dance.

The idea for the International Zouk Flash Mob was born in 2012 after a flash mob in Perth, Australia, and brought to life by Zouk Bob and Remy Dancedevil. You can learn more about the history of IZFM here. Together with a few other people, who became the Core Leaders Team, they held the first ever IZFM event on September 16th 2012. After seeing how much it resonated with Zouk communities around the globe, they decided to make it an annual tradition aspiring to two main goals:

• To raise the brand awareness of Brazilian Zouk, and
• To expand the scene, by creating new zouk communities, offering dancers, new and old, a common shared challenge and goal.

This year the International Zouk Flash Mob became the International Zouk Day, a worldwide celebration of Brazilian Zouk! On behalf of all NYC participants I would like to thank the Organizing Team for their hard work and Rodrigo Delano for creating the choreography we all had so much fun performing. And personally I am very grateful to my fellow local coordinators; Igor Fraga and Alex Chang, and to my dance mentors Henri Velandia and Jessica Lamdon for rehearsing with us and trusting me and Igor to lead the flash mob while they were traveling. Also, thanks to everyone who participated or was otherwise involved in this year’s festivities!

Cheers to many more years of celebrating Brazilian Zouk, the “dance of love”!

• Official IZD 2015 compilation by video editor Katerina Lenkevich: IZD 2015 – KL
• New York City IZD compilation by Vinícius de Souza: IZD 2015 – VDS

-SvetLana