Your teacher, Annette Kühnle
Annette hails from Heidelberg, Germany and is one of Europe’s most prominent disseminators of blues dance as a teacher, social dancer, DJ and organizer. Her love of teaching and dancing are infectious and if you’ve travelled for blues, you probably already knew that! Have a look at her website for videos, photos and the European Blues festival calendar she curates: www.annettedances.com
Blues Groove Special!
Groove is a natural, instinctive, rhythmic and repetitive movement – a sort of pulsing in 3D – that aligns our body’s center with the beat, feel and vibe of the music, regardless of what our arms and legs might be doing. It’s the difference between “performing steps” and actually feeling the music with our whole body, kind of like riding the beat as if it were a wave. It’s what gives our dancing a natural, relaxed fluidity and flow and prevents us from looking stiff.
Imagine a dance club with a glass front where we can see everyone jam inside but cannot hear the music: The groove is what would be the continuous, physical embodiment of the rhythm section and the feel of the music being played that acts as the heartbeat of the dance and that unites everyone who listens and dances to it.
The Blues Groove in particular is distinctly grounded, unhurried, and deeply tied to the historical and cultural roots of Black American vernacular dance. Since there are many different blues music styles, blues grooves can also feel and look very different. In this Blues Groove Special, we’re going to break down several of them:
Whether it’s a classic Chicago shuffle blues with an often low and expansive hip pulse, a Funky Blues tune with a chest-centered up-and-out motion or a “glued-to-the-floor” rhythmic shaking of a Mississippi Hill Country or an early Boogie groove, the variety in Blues and thus dancing to it, is vast and exciting!
With each style – and sometimes even with each single tune! – , we’ll expore both the fundamental groove behind it, and also learn or come up with groove step combinations to better express the music, both solo and in partnership.
Let’s work on surrendering our body to the natural pace and vibe of any blues song and gradually go from relaxation to expression together!
Date
Date: November 7th & 8th 2026
Venues
All classes and the party will be taking place at UNITED DANCE STUDIO, Hohlstrasse 560, 8048 Zürich – just next to Bahnhof Altstetten, above Coop Pronto.
Schedule
** Class schedule Saturday **
10:45 Check-in
11:00 – 17 Classes, incl. Lunch Break
17.10-17.45 Practice (teacher is present)
20:45 till 1:00: Party with live music (tbd)
** Class schedule Sunday ** (general classes start later!)
10.30 – 12:00 Masterclass
12:15 – 16:45 Classes incl. Breaks
16.45 – 17:00 Wrap up, Questions
Party with Livemusic
Live-music with Amaury. Party starts at 20.45
Harmonicist, guitarist and singer, Amaury Faivre is an acoustic blues artist, with a 25 years carreer, and more than 1000 stages on 3 continents and a dozen countries.
Born in Besançon in France, he blows for the first time in his father’s harmonica at the age of 8, and he naturally started playing the music of the blues pioneers, listening to artists like Robert Johnson, Mississippi Fred McDowell or John Lee Hooker… Learning jazz and its complex harmony will make him a great improviser. He starts guitar and singing, and most of all the chromatic harmonica which has been a key element to his musical personality ever since. His career debuts with the Prix du Public at the Jeunesses Musicales de France in Paris at the age of 15, and he rapidly joins local blues, jazz and rock bands. After a Bachelor of Musicology at the University of Besançon, and two years of jazz guitar studies at the Université de Montreal, he comes back to Europe and settles in Geneva.
He starts the duo Electric Hat with Jean Rigo, singer of Les Infidèles, from blues to Soul Music, through Rock n’Roll and Jazz. Amaury begins a collaboration with the Geneva guitarist Yves Staubitz among the electric blues band Amaury Faivre & the Broken Harps with whom he records Ol’ Days Feel in 2012. Later, Yves follows him in the acoustic Amaury Faivre Duo. It is with this duo that Amaury discovers a passion and a certain talent for composition, and they win the 2017 Swiss Blues Challenge. This award gives them the opportunity to represent Switzerland at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis where they obtain a beautiful place in the Semi-Finals, and they end up 4th at the European Blues Challenge in Norway. After a rich year with great European blues stages (Cahors, Sierre, Vallemaggia, Salaise…) they release Crazy Old Man, on the frontiers of blues, jazz and folk.
After years backed up by electric bands, acoustic duos or even a symphonic orchestra, he builds during the world pandemic the One Man Blues Show he offers today. In this perspective he releases the album 2020, back to his early folk-blues roots influence, with no hesitation to handle the banjo and mandolin or hit hard a gloomy stomp-box !
Price
Two days Blüesli: CHF 220 / 180 reduced
One day Blüesli (if available, you’ll be waitlisted when you register): CHF 130 / 110 reduced
Additional Masterclass Sunday: CHF 35 / 30 reduced.- (if you only do the Masterclass, no Blüesli, it is CHF 45 / 40 reduced)
Saturday Party with live music (no sign-up required): recommended donation 15 CHF (included in the workshop passes)