“La vida es un carnaval”
A tee I serendipitously thrifted after my first Carnaval Samba training
My first experience with Samba was a bit of a flop.
When I first moved to San Francisco in 2015, I tapped into the city’s rich dance community by taking an Afro-Brazilian dance class with some regularity. It was a beautiful way to feel connected to my new home and also to the African diaspora. The teacher was and is renowned in the Bay Area dance community. One Saturday, however, she wasn’t able to attend and instead we had a substitute (who happened to be a former colleague). Instead of the rooted and grounded Afro-Brazilian dance class I expected, this substitute led us in a Samba (no pé) “basics” class.
One of my toxic traits is that I think I can dance.
By that, I mean I have rhythm and a good sense of musicality, but my first encounter with Samba humbled me. I was frustrated and almost left, but our substitute teacher encouraged us to have fun, feel the music, and find joy in moving our bodies. She put on a song, Deixa Acontecer by Grupo Revelação, that would become a mantra (well, aspirationally) for me in the years to come, and I’d keep that song in my heart and playlist for the intervening years.
Fast forward to April 2022, and a friend asked if I wanted to go to an outdoor Samba class with I would come to learn was Sambaxé.
I went. I suffered. I did not do Carnaval that year.
2025 marks 10 years of living in San Francisco for me.
It’s the longest place I’ve ever lived in, and that felt weighty and worth honoring in some way. At my bookclub’s annual vision board session at the beginning of the year, I cut out a passista and pasted her to my vision board.
2025 would also be the year, I was going to commit to 1) Samba and 2) a contingency to dance with and 3) dance in San Francisco’s Carnaval, the largest multicultural celebration on the West Coast.