Lambada

Lambada () is a dance from State of Pará, Brazil. The dance briefly became internationally popular in the 1980s, especially in the Philippines, Latin America and Caribbean countries. It has adopted aspects of dances such as forró, salsa, merengue, maxixe, carimbó and Bolivian saya. Lambada is generally a partner dance. The dancers generally dance with arched legs, with the steps being from side to side, turning or even swaying, and in its original form never front to back, with a pronounced movement of the hips. At the time when the dance became popular, short skirts for women were in fashion and men wore long trousers, and the dance has become associated with such clothing, especially for women wearing short skirts that swirl up when the woman spins around, typically revealing 90s-style thong underwear. Carimbó Also known as the forbidden dance, from the time that Brazil was a Portuguese colony, Carimbó was a common dance in the northern part of the country. Carimbó was a loose and very sensual dance which involved many spins by the female dancer, who typically wore a rounded skirt. The music was mainly to the beat of drums made of trunks of wood, thinned by fire. Carimbó involved only side to side movements and many spins and hip movement, which became the basis of the lambada. After a while, a local radio station from Belém (Pará's capital city) started to call this new type of music "the strong-beated rhythm" and "the rhythms of lambada". The term "lambada" had a strong appeal and began to be associated with the new emerging face of an old dancing style. The word lambada means "strong slap" or "hit" in Portuguese. However, as a dance form, lambada is of obscure etymology. In Portuguese it may refer to the wave-like motion of a whip. This flowing wave motion is reproduced by the dancers' bodies, and is one of the main elements that distinguish Lambada from other Latin dances. Around 1983, the Carimbó dance started again to be danced in couples, in a 2-beat style, something very close to Merengue, but with more spins.