Inside a carnival rehearsal, four months out
Camila visits the rehearsal of a Rio samba school with 3,000 dancers to drill, and talks to the choreographer about counting, chaos, and keeping a whole neighbourhood in step.
Learning to dance at forty
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Show notes
Learning to dance at forty
Most of Camila's students are adults who were told at some point that they could not dance. She sits down with three of them, a lawyer, a bus mechanic and a 67 year old grandmother, and asks what it took to walk into the studio.
- The first class: mirrors, shoes and wanting to leave
- Why adults learn differently from children, and sometimes faster
- Counting out loud and the embarrassment of being heard
- The week it clicked for each of them
- What changed outside the studio: posture, confidence, a wedding
If you have been thinking about a class for years, consider this your push. Send Camila a message after your first one.
Transcript
Oi, welcome to Five, Six, Seven, Eight. I am Camila Nogueira, and this is a show about dance, about the work of it and the joy of it and the sore feet of it. Today I have three guests who are not professionals. They are students from my studio here in Rio, and all three started as adults. A lawyer who came because her daughter dared her. A bus mechanic who wanted to dance at his sister's wedding. And a grandmother of 67 who had been told at school that she had no rhythm. We talk about the terror of the first class, about mirrors, about counting out loud when everyone can hear you, and about the exact week it clicked for each of them. Every one of them cried at some point. So did I. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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