I Am Back to Shuffling

May 1, 2026

Bal du moulin de la Galette by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1876 - a dappled-light Sunday-afternoon dance scene at a Montmartre garden cafe, couples spinning, others sitting at tables with drinks, the whole canvas alive with sun and chatter — Pierre-Auguste Renoir, *Bal du moulin de la Galette*, 1876.

I learnt a bit of shuffling on YouTube in 2009 when I was 16 years old. It was a different world.

The internet was very different. I learnt with some YouTube videos. I wish I could find them. Maybe I will after some advanced searching. I remember the video editing was sooo ugly haha - those PowerPoint-style transitions between different techniques.

2009 was a key year for my personality growing up. I changed schools from Colégio Magnum to Colégio Bernoulli. The latter was something like a "private secular nerd school", and the former was more like a private Catholic school that behaved a bit like the American public schools you see in the movies. I remember Drama Club was mandatory in Bernoulli. Funnily enough, I was elected best actor! Can you believe this? I was actually quite shy as a teenager until that point.

I also started shuffling because I wanted to do something at the teenager parties I started going to back then. EDM was big in Brazil during the 2000s. I remember going to parties in white skate shoes and shuffling while the lighting effects pulsed. I wish I had a video of that too. The shoes moving with the lights and the sound was great…

Actually, have you ever heard of the fifteen-year-old rule for movies? Brazilian podcaster Jovem Nerd coined it, AFAIK: never re-watch a movie you loved and first saw before you were 15. It usually sucks and destroys the sweet memory you had. Better to leave it intact. In my mind I was close to a superhero shuffling when I was a teenager.

L'Etoile (The Star) by Edgar Degas, 1878 - a young ballerina caught mid-pirouette under stage spotlights, arms extended, tutu glowing, while shadowy figures wait in the wings behind her — Edgar Degas, *L'Étoile* (The Star), 1878.

Recently, I decided to come back. I found a cool course in downtown Montreal with 6 classes. Now I do have a video and intend to keep practising. As usual, my friend Lucas is around for this kind of weird shit. The woman in the video is one of my classmates: