In Holland Claudio developed his own style of Lambada/Zouk, called `Zouk Love´. Zouk Love is sexy, sensual, and beautiful to see and for sure fun to dance! It is danced by all kinds of people, of all ages, sexes and nationalities. Claudio saw Zouk the first time in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro in 1997 at the 2nd International Dance meeting with Jaime Aroxa. Adilio and Renata Porto gave a presentation Zouk. Claudio was amazed and immediately in love with this dance. At that moment he decides to learn his first Zouksteps with Adilio and Renata. From them he got the Zouk - inspiration and decided to bring this beautiful dance to Holland. Which he did. He made his own Zouk Love style, which is at the moment very popular in Holland! 

 

The real (hi)story of the Lambada/Zouk. 

The Lambada / Zouk refers both to the rhythm - a fusion of Carimbó and Merengue - and to the dance, which incorporates elements of Forró, samba, Merengue and Maxixe (the 19th century Brazilian dance which was a tremendous success in Europe). The rhythm has its origin in the Amazon and arrived later at Bahia. The Lambada was recognized to have become a summer-fever in Bahia. At that time the Lambada was far away from having its true worldwide success. The many first Lambaterias (a place to dance Lambada) in Bahia, which opened, couldn't stand the low tourism of the winter station and all of them unfortunately had to close a few months later, but this wasn't the end….Meanwhile in Brazil the Lambada was being buried at winter, some people out of Europe had other plans for it: At the end of that very summer, a couple of French businessman came to Brazil and bought the musical rights of something like 300 lambada-musics, they went back to France, and created the Kaoma Band. They turned Lambada in a worldwide known style with the worldwide known song: "Chorando se foi" (which means: the one who left crying) is in fact a Bolivian music called "Llorando se fue" (which has the same meaning). A tale is that Lambada had its origin in Bolivia, which definitely is a great mistake! Kaoma reach even the far east of Japan with Lambada in which Lambada is still danced nowadays! The Kaoma world-hit was so strong that brought something almost unbelievable: it came back to Brazil! But this time it came not to the North of Brazil but to the economically evolved southeast region (a region on which decades over, Brazil imported foreign music). 

This re-insertion of Lambada changed the way people danced, and for the first time in more than 30 years, since the Beatles, young couples started to dance together once more. Besides the fact that young people came back to the Ballroom dancing, the Lambada became internationally known as much as the Samba! Most professional dancers started changing the way Lambada was danced: Rock spins and steps were added (like those from Jive and East coast swing), and also some acrobatically movements became more common-placed. After the ups & down's the Lambada had in History, the Lambada composers were starting to fade away. The music and dance lost its strength, and let hordes of millions of fans all over the world helpless. Some very resistant dancers started to use other music styles to keep on dancing this so early discovered pleasure. People gathered the habit of using many of the Caribbean music like Soca, Merengue, Salsa and Zouk to dance the Lambada. (During that time...) There was also another band, which sold plenty, discs in Brazil associated with Lambada: the Rumba band called The Gipsy Kings. Finally the dance recovered most of its original way and style, with less acrobatically movements, smoother, intimate and closer contact. Nowadays the dance changed its name to Zouk (on most parts of Brazil)

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