You may have heard the name DançAlegria before. It's the name that Willem Engel and a group of other Zouk teachers are using to give Zouk classes and demos in several locations. Now, Willem has chosen to launch DançAlegria as a full-fledged dance school.

Their home base will be Mirror Centre in Amsterdam, but they will also continue to teach at the locations where they're currently giving courses.

On tuesday 11 May they will host their first open house with free try-out lessons. For more information check out the website www.dancalegria.com.

If you enjoy dancing Forró and Samba, the biggest Brazilian Forró festival in Europe is coming up in June with four days of parties, workshops and movies. The event will be held in Stuttgart, Germany. The main dance will be Forró, but there are also workshops Samba de Gafieira and Samba Rock. There will be several teachers from different parts of Brazil and you can enjoy live Forró music by the famous acordeonista Chico Chagas and Forró composer and singer Miltinho Edilberto. You can find more information at the website of Forró de Domingo.

Brazilian dance teachers Luis & Adriana are on a European tour. They will also spend a few days in Holland to give a series of bootcamps Gafieira and Zouk.

Luis and Adriana live in Rio de Janeiro and specialize in Forró, Samba de Gafieira and Zouk. They are very active in the dance scene in Brazil, not only teaching and giving shows, but also researching the history and background of the dances, they are the are
the heads of a Brazilian national social dance association and they regularly organise their own Br Danças Brazilian dance congresses in Rio.

On saturday April 24th, they will teach a Zouk bootcamp in Amsterdam and on sunday April 25th there will be a Samba de Gafieira bootcamp and Gafieira party organised by Zouklovers and Juliana Braga. For more information, check out the website of Zouklovers.

Nowadays there are many variations of Brazilian Zouk like Lambazouk, Zouk Love, etc. But it all started in 1989 when the band Kaoma had a big worldwide hit with the Lambada.

Today, the singer of this song is still active and is very much in touch with the dance scene. In June 2010, for the first time, she will organize her own dance congress.

The congress will be held in the city of Vitória in the state of Espiritu Santo in Brazil. For more information about Loalwa Braz, check out her website and for more information about the congress, check out the "congresses and events" page here on Sambaworld or check out our party agenda e-mails.