Brazilian zouk is a partner dance originating from Brazil. Also known as zouk-lambada, the dance is a descendant of lambada, the music & dance style that swept over the world like a storm in the late 1980's. Brazilian zouk is characterized by the dancers’ undulating bodies and the girls' flowing hair. Depending on the style of Brazilian zouk, you can see a close connection embrace and long graceful steps, strong hip movements, body isolations and upper-body torsions, wild spins and whip-like head movements. While the dance is often called sensual, it is not sexual or erotic. It is danced by people of all ages in night clubs, dance schools and events around the world!
Like many dance styles, Brazilian zouk is ever evolving. There are a few different lines or styles of Brazilian zouk, the main three derivations at the moment (April 2015) being ‘lambazouk’, ‘traditional zouk’ and ‘modern zouk’.
In addition and within these three styles many professional zouk dancers have created and named their own derivations of zouk, such as Flow zouk, Mzouk, Soul zouk and Vero zouk. Some of those styles that are newer among zouk can be considered to belong to the Modern zouk category, some could be considered yet another category of their own - there is a constant discussion on how and if zouk should be categorized. The basic idea though is that all styles follow the same fundamental concepts that are shared throughout Brazilian zouk. It is surely the desire of all us zouk dancers to be able to dance with one another irrespective of the ‘label’ of zouk one may fall under.