• Dancing is a healthy and fun activity, a great hobby, and a great way to make friends and to possibly meet a romantic interest.
• Dance styles that you’ll encounter in Brazil are Samba, Bolero, Forró, Tango, Zouk, and Salsa and West Coast Swing has recently arrived.
• Forró is a very easy dance to learn. It’s so easy for the women to learn that most can forego any lessons at all, especially those who have experience in other dance forms. A woman who has never danced in pair, and has good rhythm and an affinity to learn, can learn in about four lessons and then will finish her learning on the dance floor at the Forró dance parties.
• The dance of Forró today consists of two general parts that the man will alternate between during each song depending on how he wants to lead.
• The first part is called dancing “juntinho”, or close together. Ideally, this is chest-to-chest and cheek-to-cheek, very close, with legs interlocking, which makes it much easier to lead (and, yes, more enjoyable). The further north you go in Brazil the closer people dance together when dancing forró. Early forró was only danced “juntinho” and anyone can still dance this way for the entire song, especially when the dance floor is packed. When packed, this is about all you can do.
• When learning forró, you will start with the basic step, which is essentially “juntinho”. You then learn the move to transition into dancing separate, with hands connection, which is called, “the mirror”, or “espelho”. With experience the mirror is entered into so briefly as to almost not be used at all. From the mirror all other moves are entered. These are regular spins of the woman and the man, reverse turns of the woman and man, and quite a bit more.
• The second part consists of the “passes”, or the turns and other moves done once separated, though almost always with one or both hands connected. These moves resemble the turns from Salsa, and were in fact added to Forró by salsa dancers as the forms of forró were evolving in Rio de Janeiro 20 years ago.

The best way to know forró is to see it danced