A Nossa Dança
by Calema
- Language
- Portuguese
- Released
- 2023
- Genre
- Pop
- Level
- A2
- Difficulty score
- 252
How to study this song
Learning “A Nossa Dança” means 47 entries at A2 — 18 Portuguese words, 4 adjectives and 25 verb forms, every one taken from what the song actually says. Work through the glossary first: dança, amor and sorriso are the words you will lean on most. This one leans on its verbs: 25 distinct forms against 4 adjectives, so conjugation is where the effort goes. At this level the goal is recognition: hear a word, place it, keep going.
The words of this song, in six languages
Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.
Vocabulary
| PT | EN | ES | IT | FR | NL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| dança | dance | baile | danza | danse | dans |
| amor | love | amor | amore |
Adjectives
| PT | EN | ES | IT | FR | NL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| lindo | beautiful | lindo | bello | beau | mooi |
This card holds 3 more adjectives. You meet them when you play the song.
Verb forms
| PT | EN | ES | IT | FR | NL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| joga | throw | echa | getta | jette | gooi |
| atira | throw | lanza | lancia |
What this song teaches you
Level · A2
- Vocabulary words
- 18
- Adjectives
- 4
- Word combos
- 3
- Expressions
- 6
- Verb forms
- 25
- Quiz questions
- 35
Background
About the song
Calema are two brothers, Fradique and António Mendes Ferreira, born in São Tomé and Príncipe and based in Portugal since their teens. They have been recording together since 2011, and their music sits in a space that is hard to label from outside: pop structures, R&B harmony, and the rhythmic pull of kizomba, the slow partner dance that came out of Angola in the eighties and spread across the Portuguese-speaking world. A Nossa Dança, released on 6 April 2023 on the Klasszik label, is the clearest statement of that mixture they have made. It is a Portuguese song, sung in Portuguese. The song opens on a wedding. Coarse salt is thrown on the floor and rice is thrown into the air — two gestures that will be immediately legible to anyone raised in Portugal or Brazil, and slightly mysterious to everyone else. Rice is the familiar one: thrown over a newly married couple as a wish for prosperity and children. Coarse salt is older and stranger, scattered to drive off bad luck and the evil eye. Putting them in the first two lines tells you what kind of song this is before a single word about love arrives: a celebration that is also a protection. What follows is a portrait of a couple who almost did not happen. The singer admits he doubted — right up until the moment their eyes met — and only afterwards could he say he had found the person he was looking for. That admission does a lot of work. It turns the chorus from a boast into gratitude, and it explains why the song keeps asking for strength rather than assuming it. The dance in the title is not decoration either. Across the song, dancing is what the couple do instead of explaining themselves: when she leans against his chest, time stops, and he answers by bringing the clouds down to her feet. It is a deliberately impossible image, and it works because kizomba is danced close, chest to chest, with the two dancers moving as one body. The song is describing a specific way of holding someone, not a general idea of romance.
Did you know?
The rice and salt at the start belong to a tradition older than the song by centuries. Rice at weddings is common across Europe and Asia as a fertility wish. Coarse salt thrown on the ground is more specifically Iberian folk practice, used to cleanse a space of bad luck — the same instinct behind throwing spilled salt over your shoulder. Kizomba, the rhythm underneath the track, was born in Angola in the late seventies and early eighties, when musicians slowed the Antillean zouk and sang it in Portuguese. It arrived in Lisbon with Angolan and Cape Verdean communities and has been part of the Portuguese musical landscape ever since — which is why a song like this one sounds, to a Portuguese listener, entirely at home rather than exotic. The brothers' stage name comes from the sea: «calema» is the heavy swell that rolls onto West African beaches at certain times of year. The song is sung in Portuguese almost throughout. Late on, a few lines slip into Forro, the Portuguese-based creole of São Tomé and Príncipe and the brothers' first language — a short nod home rather than a change of direction.