URKIZ
Who’s Urkiz ?
Urkiz is a movement that puts an emphasis on Unique and Real souls. To do so, there’s an active focus on promoting a safe environment, to allow everyone to feel welcome to be themselves, while respecting others, and respecting all living and nonliving things. This would be only possible with years of experiencing different types of challenge in dances communities, and learning from different sources without discrimination. We all have a meaningful piece of a bigger picture, and in Unity and always keeping awareness of our Reality, we can keep thriving to share our love of dance, in ultimate safety. We’re stronger together, and we can all save the world while having fun, being authentic, and practicing patience while everything is unfolding.
How it all started ?
Tarah-Stephanie started dancing in 2010, but all her life had an interest for dance, expression and music. When she got into college, she unrolled the Brebeuf’s Dance Team and rapidly learned to end up being an assistant coach a few years later. She had a burning desire to keep pushing herself, so took classes in many dance schools in Montreal: New Dance, Urban Element, Montreal-Paris. She later joined Mpress, and started competing nationally and getting jobs in the industry. A little after, she jumped in and started her first team, Throne Official, which was a gathering of many of the dancers that has graduated Brebeuf and wanted to keep training. Next, she joined Blvck Royalty, and it’s during that era that she got introduced to the Kizomba world. It was love at first sight, and on her journey she has been mentored by many incredible artists, which built her confidence to take risk and start solo performances, videos and assist teachers during their classes. As you can anticipate at this point, Tarah never stays in her comfort zone. A few years later she created Urkiz, which was one of the first lady styling teams in North America. This move jump-started her career, and beside training her team, she started traveling internationally. From the United States, Europe, Mexico, Korea, and Canada, she taught, performed & competed with the best dancers of her time. In 2018 she organized her first festival, which became a unique event in the dance scene.
How it’s going ?
The season 2022 - 2023 had weekly styling classes, open practices and montly intensives. There was also two teams Urkiz Crew and Urkiz Pro, that trained bi-weekly, performed, competed , taught and assisted classes. We hosted our Festival U4 and brought together amazing dancers and DJs. This next season is about bringing our values in the places that needs us, getting out of our comfort zone, and bringing new flavors to the scene internationally. Stay updated to see how it evolve!
What’s coming?
The main focus of Urkiz is to build a safe foundation for everything coming next. This can take some time, even more, while maintaining our code of ethics and professional conduct. It promotes Inclusivity, Team Work, Respect, Humility, Integrity, Engagement, Punctuality, and Confidentiality. It fights against all types of Violence, Bullying, Exclusionary behavior, Discrimination, Insults, Sexual Misconduct, Power Abuse, and any Promotion or Enabling of those behaviors. This is constant teamwork, so if you’ve important information to share, feel safe to write an email at urkizofficial@gmail.com.