Braz Dos Santos: Dance is a massage to the spirit

Clique aqui para ler este artigo em português!

It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments. You sit face to face with a true legend of your #1 passion in life and hear them open their heart and share their life story. That was me last month, sitting face to face with a certain tall and dark gentleman. And now I get to share this story with you: my interview with Braz Dos Santos.

In case you don’t know Braz yet, he is indeed a living legend of Brazilian zouk and probably one the reasons why we are dancing this dance still today. He started his dance career 28 years ago by winning a lambada competition on his first night on the dance floor. Leaving his perilous life as a fisherman he soon went on to be a dancer with the iconic Kaoma band. Still today he is dancing and teaching, and is probably as energetic & joyful as he was 28 year ago.

Braz Dos Santos: Dança é uma massagem no espírito

Click here to read this article in English!

É um momento unico. A sentar-se cara a cara com uma das lendas verdadeiras do seu paixão e ouvir quando ele abre o seu coração e conta a sua história. Isso foi eu no mês passado, falando com um cavalheiro alto e moreno muito genial. E agora eu posso compartilhar esta história com vocês: a minha entrevista com Braz Dos Santos!

No caso de você já não conhece Braz, ele é de fato uma lenda viva do zouk brasileiro e, provavelmente, em parte por causa dele nós estamos dançando esta dança ainda hoje. Ele começou sua carreira de dança há 28 anos e ele ganhou uma competição da lambada na sua primeira noite na pista da dança. Deixando sua vida perigosa como um pescador, ele logo se tornou um dançarino com uma banda icônica, Kaoma. Ainda hoje ele dança e ensina, e é provavelmente tão enérgico e alegre como ele era 28 anos atrás.

Larissa Thayane - "Foundations are the key" (interview Part 2)

I sat down with Larissa Thayane recently to talk about her historical zouk project, the Brazialian Zouk Dance Council - read more about this in the previous post.

While I had a chance to talk to Larissa, I wasn't going to miss this opportunity to hear from her what is that drove her to zouk and what drives her today. And I gave her a chance to share her advice to all us zoukers on what she feels are the most important things while learning zouk!


Zouk The World: Tell us a bit about your zouk history - how did you get involved with zouk in the first place?

Larissa Thayane: I’ve only danced zouk 10-11 years now. Before I started with ballet, jazz, contemporary, and that’s what I did my whole childhood and as a profession. When I moved to Rio de Janeiro, where I started working with a ballet/contemporary company, I started to do salsa because I just wanted to do something for fun. So latin dance was my hobby! That’s how I met different dancers and learnt samba de gafieira, bolero, forró - and saw zouk for the first time. Initially, it didn’t get my attention.