So, the other day I was trying to learn some new dance moves, and I stumbled upon this thing called “Cheetah Sambas”. Sounds cool, right? I mean, who wouldn’t want to dance like a cheetah? Anyway, I started my little adventure trying to figure this out.
First, I did what everyone does – I googled it. Found out that Samba is this lively dance from Brazil, and it’s in 2/4 time. Whatever that means. Apparently, it’s got some African roots too, from Congo and Angola. I started tapping my foot, thinking, “Okay, I can do this.”
Then I got into the music part. People online were saying the basic rhythm is like, “1 a 2, 3 a 4” and so on. And get this, each step has a different beat value. Like, you hold the first step for 3/4 of a beat, then do a quick one for just 1/4. I tried following this, and let me tell you, it was a mess. My legs were all over the place.
I looked up some Samba music. There was this song, “O Sol Nascer” by someone called Cartola. It was kinda catchy, all about being positive and stuff. But honestly, I couldn’t really get the hang of the steps with it.
- Tried finding songs that had the right “beat” – like, searching for “song x type beat”. It kinda worked sometimes.
- Spent hours just listening to different songs, trying to catch the rhythm.
- Clapping and tapping my fingers, hoping to find that elusive beat.
There’s this site called Deezer where you can listen to Cheetah’s discography. I don’t even know if this Cheetah is related to the dance, but I gave it a listen. No luck. It was more like a wild goose chase than a dance tutorial.
I realized that learning a dance from scratch is way harder than it looks. You can read about it, listen to the music, but actually doing it? That’s a whole other story. It’s like, you gotta feel the music, not just hear it.
In the end, I didn’t quite master the “Cheetah Sambas”, but hey, I gave it a shot. My living room saw some pretty wild moves, I can tell you that. And who knows, maybe one day I’ll get it right. But for now, I’m just gonna stick to my usual awkward dancing style. It’s more… me.
