Learn Kizomba and Semba with the Turma do Básico
Here you will find videos of kizomba/semba steps from our Youtube channel. We post once per week (on Wednesdays). Subscribe to our channel to never miss a video!
If you’ve never danced either of these dances, we suggest you start by having a look at our Angolan Modern Dances page.
We encourage you to try the steps at the home or in your schools and to film yourselves, and send us your videos! To do this, you can either send them via email (using Google Drive or Dropbox if the file is too big) or you can post them on your social media using the #joinangola hashtag. Our dance teachers in Angola will do their best to review them and give you comments!
Also, if you are a kizomba/semba teacher and want to send us a video of yourself teaching a step, get in touch with us using the contact form or our social media accounts (that you can find in the homepage).
As stated in our “What we do” page, we try our best to make sure everybody feels included. For this reason, we generally try to use the “leader/follower” denominations instead of “man/woman”. Traditionally, semba and kizomba are lead by the man, so – for those of you who speak Portuguese – you’ll often hear the teachers talk about stuff like “the retrocesso for the woman”, or “the man steps here…”.
We apologize for this and we tried to correct it in the subtitles, but its still very difficult to think of dance partner as not necessarily man=leader/woman=follower in Angola. Feel free to call us out if you feel like we are failing you in this aspect, while we keep trying to improve!
Beginners
As a beginner, you should start by watching the videos in which we show how to do the basics and the retrocesso. You can find both in our beginner’s playlist. Here are all the videos available for you:
Subscribe to our channelIntermediate
For both intermediates and advanced we have been working on a series of steps and sequences that will help you improve your dance. You can see all of them below, or go to watch them in our playlist for intermediate learners.
Advanced
While we recognise teaching an advanced level online is difficult, we have tried to provide advanced dancers with a series of sequences that include some more difficult “toques” and that combine steps in different ways.