Lining Up to Master the Lambada
Picture this: You’re in a ballroom dance class, just finishing up a twirl through a fox trot and maybe a meringue or two. Across the floor is the most attractive person you’ve ever seen, and you’d love to wrap your arms. . .
But, wait! The music starts and-- what’s that? It’s the Lambada, the sexy new body-to-body dance from Brazil. All right! What a way to get to know somebody.
The jury may still be out on whether the Lambada is going to be a fleeting comet or a high-magnitude new star, but ballroom dancers and instructors have already reached a verdict. For them, it’s the real stuff, the first couples dance in years that has brought students pouring into dance studios.
The fascination with choreography that places dancers in tight, body-to-body contact has increased, if anything, since the dance arrived from Brazil last autumn after a detour through Europe.
The Lambada, as a highly visible media phenomenon, may indeed turn out to have little more than the Andy Warhol-prescribed 15 minutes of fame. But as a social dance, say the instructors, it’s here to stay.
The impact on Southland classes in the last two months has been dramatic. Felix Chavez, perhaps the Southland’s most visible Lambada instructor, just added his fourth weekly class on the Lambada, up from one last fall, at his Warner Dance Center West in Woodland Hills. One of the sessions--on Wednesday nights--is especially slanted toward beginning students.
“If the response I’m seeing in my classes is any indication,” said Chavez, “it’s going to be around for quite a while. As a matter of fact, we’re getting a lot of teachers coming in to learn it so they can teach their own private students. And that’s always a sign that there’s a lot of serious interest in a dance.”
When asked about the potential embarrassment of taking a class that calls for immediate and intimate contact with strangers, Chavez laughed heartily. “Oh, I’ve got an easy answer for that. Some people hold back a bit. But I tell them, ‘Ladies, I promise you, you will not get pregnant.’ They all laugh, and once a few of them get started they all get into it.
“And when I get someone who’s really nervous about dancing so close with a stranger, I say, ‘Hey, it’s a good way to get acquainted--fast!’ ”
On the East Coast, Kathy Blake, a New Hampshire-based teacher/performer who has released more than 50 instructional dance videos, including one on the Lambada, is equally enthusiastic. “I’m excited about it,” she said. “We teachers love to see a dance craze come along that’s fun and different. I think it’s going to become very popular in the spring and into the summer.”
Blake used an amateur video of Lambada dancers, made by a producer who went to several German nightclubs to capture the moves, as the foundation for her interpretation of the dance.
“Everyone is finding their own way to structure it,” said Blake. “There really isn’t any other way to do it, because there is no published dance syllabus from the Imperial Society of England, which is what we usually teach from.”
“Lambada is dance that came right out of the streets,” she continued. “And I think that’s why all of us teachers were so taken by surprise. But that’s OK, because that’s where all dance originates, anyhow.”
Chavez, a tall, elegant tango champion and expert in Latin dances, says he picked up the fundamentals of the Lambada “from a Brazilian from Bahia. But the original only has a very few variations, and you can’t satisfy the American or the European public with a few variations. So we added little turns, little different pieces of character to the way we teach it. We wanted to keep the original Brazilian quality and add something to it.”
A recent Thursday night session at his Warner Dance Center West revealed how successful Chavez has been with his personalized version of the Lambada. The class included a wide mixture of students, ranging from young people in their teens and 20s to a vivacious 83-year-old named Belle Yuster.
Dressed in a short skirt, black stockings and high heels, Yuster moved through the quick steps and swinging hip movements of the dance with the easy flare of a youngster.
“It’s a marvelous dance,” she said, “and I love the freedom of it.”
But what about the sexy qualities of the Lambada--the intertwined thighs and body-to-body movements?
“Bah,” scoffed Yuster. “I’m dancing with a man I go steady with. Doing the dance is no sexier than what happens when I sit on his lap. No difference. And with morals the way they are these days, who’s going to ask questions? So if you enjoy it, you just dance. And I enjoy it.”
Homemaker Toby Anne Schwartz, moving sensuously around the floor with a succession of partners, paused for a few moments to agree with Yuster. “I just don’t think there’s any way you can sit still once you hear those Lambada rhythms. And as far as the sexiness is concerned, once you get out on the floor, you quickly lose whatever shyness you might have about some of the dance movements.”
Businessman Arnold Kramer, enthusiastically taking his third Lambada class, added a third voice of agreement. “I love the sexy aspects of it,” he said. “It’s got much more style to it than ‘Dirty Dancing’ does, and it really brings out the sensuality in women. And that’s great.”
The Lambada’s overnight popularity in the United States has followed an enormous rage for the dance last summer in Europe. Epic Records’ “Lambada,” the first single release from Kaoma, the group that started the whole thing, sold more than 4 million copies in Europe alone--an astounding figure.
By August, Paris was filled with Lambada dance clubs and an almost assuredly apocryphal press release from Epic Records described a huge crowd of East Germans “doing the Lambada to welcome Mikhail Gorbachev on the occasion of his October visit.”
The dance itself traces to the northern provinces of Brazil. Its Caribbean influenced rhythms and African-like movements made it extremely popular in rural areas. In the 1930s, a Lambada-like dance was banned by Getulio Vargas, the country’s then-dictator, for its lascivious qualities.
It surfaced again in more contemporary form in the ‘60s and ‘70s. But its popularity never approached that of Brazil’s omnipresent samba, and it wasn’t until two French entrepreneurs took the dance back to Europe last summer that its international popularity began to rise like a comet.
“What I find fascinating, as an instructor,” said Kathy Blake, “and I’ve been doing Latin dances for 20 some years, is that the Lambada feels like a really new dance, with unique movements. They are not just rehashes. The swinging of the hips in relationship to the footwork is not exactly a merengue, not exactly a samba, not exactly like anything I’ve done before. And that’s kind of fun.
“It’s really a new dance. It may have a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but in total it’s not like anything I’ve done in all my years of dancing.”
While the sensuous movements of the Lambada have been its most highly publicized elements, perhaps its real significance is that it represents a return to couples dancing--with a vengeance. Not since the hustle--which in itself was not a particularly good example--have dancers had the opportunity to dance with arms (and, in the case of the Lambada, legs) intertwined.
“I see people feeling both ways about the dance,” said dance instructor Craig Morris. “Some don’t want to do it because it looks like sex on the dance floor; some want to do it for exactly the same reason.
“But once they start learning the Lambada as a dance, they find out there’s more to it. Best of all, it’s dancing with a partner, which I think is really what dancing’s all about.”
“A lot of dances come in,” continued Morris, “and as a dance instructor you have to learn them. Then, just about the point where you have them learned, they’re out. But I don’t think that’s going to be true with the Lambada. It’s fresh, it has a new, vigorous kind of feeling, and I think it’s going to be around for quite a while.”
Where to Learn Lambada
Where to dance the Lambada:
Samba e Saudade, 9300 W. Jefferson Blvd., Culver City, Saturdays from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m.
Hy’s Century City, 10131 Constellation Blvd., Century City, Wednesdays from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m.
Spice, 7070 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, Sundays from 7 to 11 p.m. until March 8.
There are occasional Lambada nights at 20-20 in Century City. The Brazilian Carnaval ’90 at the Palladium on Feb. 23 will feature Lambada, Samba and many other Brazilian dances from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m.
Where to learn the Lambada:
Warner Dance Center West, Woodland Hills. (818) 713-2673. Individual lessons with Felix Chavez and four classes a week.
Arthur Murray Dance Studios, Woodland Hills. (818) 888-9888. Individual lessons and classes.
Arthur Murray Dance Studios, Beverly Hills. (213) 274-8867. Individual lessons and classes.
World of Dance, Northridge. (818) 718-2800. Private lessons.
Westside Academy of Dance, Santa Monica. (213) 828-2018. Individual lessons and classes.
Videos:
Kathy Blake’s “Let’s Learn How to Dance the Lambada.” Available from Butterfly Video, Box 184, Antrim, N.H. 03440.