WORLD MUSIC REVIEW : Kaoma Plants Its Feet and Lambada Firmly at the Palace

What’s happening with the lambada? Can it be--oh no!--that the sexy new Brazilian dance, the hottest music movement to arrive in years, has already experienced its 15 minutes of fame?

Rest your fears. Although it’s been pretty much an underground phenomenon since it first arrived in the Southland recently, the thigh-intertwined, pelvis-to-pelvis dance, with its infectiously rhythmic music, has been popping up all over the place--from dance classes and discos to TV news bites and a New Year’s Eve appearance on CBS. But it still hasn’t attained the mass market intensity that has made it such a startling success in Europe.

All that may now be changing. Friday night the lambada entered a new phase with the appearance in town of Kaoma, the multinational group that started the whole thing. Its performance at the Palace had all the trappings of an “event,” with an overflow audience and the usual gaggle of celebrities.

As the P.A. system roared out a colorful collection of rhythmic world beat music, the crowd’s energy level sizzled with intensity. On the packed floor, little pockets of movement kept erupting into anticipatory variations on the sensuous lambada. Setting the pace, Felix Chavez, one of the pioneer instructors in the new dance, drew most of the notice. “This is a terrific dance,” he said. “It’s a great way for people to get acquainted--fast!”

With the opening of the curtain, however, attention shifted to the stage, as the five musicians, three singers and eight dancers of Kaoma came on with an explosion of aural and visual energy.

Listening to the sunny, virtually impossible-to-resist rhythms, it wasn’t hard to understand why Kaoma’s music has been so astoundingly successful. Their initial single recording, “Lambada,” sold 4 million copies in Europe and the United Kingdom in six months--the largest-selling single in the history of CBS Records’ European operation. The group’s new Epic album, “World Beat,” has also taken off with a rush, selling more than half a million copies in the first two weeks of its European release.

Kaoma made it clear, from the first pulsating notes of “Dancando Lambada,” that they are a first-class musical ensemble, as well.

The music flowed easily from one song to the next. While pieces like “Lambareggae” and “Lamba Caribe” may initially have been conceived to broaden both the rhythms and the reach of the lambada, they were appealingly melodic enough to fully stand on their own.

Kaoma’s eight young dancers were the visual highlight of the performance, spinning and twirling across the stage with impossible reserves of enthusiasm and energy.

By the time Kaoma launched into its second encore rendition of “Lambada,” most of the audience was moving in some kind of improvised version of the dance. “C’est magnifique!” shouted a young French woman, slinking through the multinational, multiethnic crowd.