What is kizomba

Kizomba came out of Angola in the 1980s, from semba, the traditional Angolan dance. It is sung mostly in Portuguese and in creole, and its relationship to salsa or bachata is none: they share the same parties in Europe, but they come from different places.

"Slow bachata" is the most common description and also the most wrong. Bachata walks sideways over four counts; kizomba walks in any direction and has no repeating basic step.

What a kizomba couple does is walk together. The lead proposes a direction and a weight, and the follow answers. There is no sequence to memorise, which is why a kizomba class looks very little like a salsa one: you work on balance, on how the foot lands and on posture long before any figure.

That makes it easy to start and slow to master. On day one you can walk. What takes years is making that walk comfortable for the other person.

You will hear all three names in a single night and they get mixed up constantly. It is worth having the difference straight, because classes are advertised with those words.

Kizomba is danced with the torsos in contact, and anyone who does not know that before their first class gets a surprise. It is a technical position — the connection is how the lead travels — and it carries no other reading.

That said, the distance is yours to set. You can dance kizomba in open position all night and plenty of people do. If someone insists on closing more than you want, stop the dance and walk off the floor.

It rarely gets its own party. Usually kizomba takes a side room, or a stretch of the night inside a salsa and bachata social. Big cities do have full kizomba and urban kiz nights, almost always midweek.

If you are starting out, look for the class before the social. That is where most of the teaching happens and where it is easiest to find someone to practise with afterwards.