Jack and Jills are based on social dancing. This means that you are improvising a dance with a random partner to a random song. This does not mean that Jack and Jill competitions are exactly like social dancing.

For example, in competition you will be judged on elements including your appearance. And, your visual aesthetics are more important to competitions than in social dancing. You need to also be aware of things like facing the audience, in addition to the technique, timing, and connection that are staples of social dancing.

This means that even great social dancers may need to adjust their dancing to do well in competitions.Jack and Jill competitions are also a mix of luck and skill. Skill is how well you execute and fulfill the competition criteria. Luck is who you draw as your partner, when the judges are watching you vs. someone else, and what songs you dance to.

After witnessing the Brazilian Zouk Jack & Jill competitions at the Canada Zouk Congress 2019 and participating in several novice Jack & Jills, Charles Ogar was inspired to bring the same format to the urbankiz scene.

In an effort to raise the overall level of dancing with Jack & Jill competitions in the urbankiz dance scene, we brought this style of competition to the Neo Kizomba Festival 2019!

After the success at Neokiz 2019, we were planning to bring it again to Neokiz 2020, but we had the pandemic. We are grateful to have been able to bring it back to Neokiz 2022 and we also made it possible to host the 3rd Urbankiz Jack & Jill at the Boston Kizomba Festival 2022!

We don't have an official urbankiz dance association yet, so currently to make the competitions fair we have separated them into novice and intermediate division.

The divisions for Jack and Jill competitions are leveled by experience.

Dancers will compete in Novice if:
- They do not teach kizomba/urban kiz, or do not get compensated to teach locally/nationally; OR You have been dancing for less than 2 years.

Dancers will compete in Intermediate if:
- they have been compensated to teach kizomba or urbankiz locally/nationally

As we grow more and learn more we will update these divisions accordingly.

Top 3 finalists for each division typically win passes to attend other festivals where they can compete in more Jack & Jill competitions.