First there was salsa, and now there-s kizomba — the slower and romantic cousin of the semba, another Angolan dance form. Both rely heavily on the beat of the music, with kizomba catering to Portuguese folk songs that are percussion-heavy and based on the count of four. Shivaji Park resident Mary Lobo, who picked up the dance form during her travels to Europe and has been teaching it since 2018, will instruct enthusiasts this weekend. She will be partnering with Hyderabad-based dancer Chandru Cassy. Ahead of a two-day workshop, we head to an Andheri space to give kizomba a shot ourselves.

"The word translates to -party- and is essentially a couple dance where you use the rhythm of the song to connect with your partner," explains Lobo, before we begin our half-hour-long session, at the end of which we learn that timing is everything in this dance style, as it demands a great deal of improvisation.
We start with the first step, which involves moving to the beat on the spot, starting with the right foot for ladies and left for the men, completing one set in four counts. Though we aren-t sp­orting heels, which is prefe­r­red, we begin by pressing our toes into the ground and moving the body to the rhythm, with the feet joined together. We bend our knees a bit to help transfer our weight from one foot to the other. That-s when we hit our first roadblock — for we can-t isolate the top half of our body from the lower one, which is required for the movement our bottom is su­pposed to make as we dance. But we do manage to reach a relatively fluid flow in 10 minutes.