Tudo Beleza

Made the long drive up to Seattle twice recently, for Tudo Beleza's dress rehearsal one weekend, and then for their big show the next.

Tudo Beleza is Seattle's brand-new professional samba dance group. Really high end. Honestly - these four girls are as good as anything I've seen in Brazil. It is a quartet: Vanessa, Oriana, Lisette and Laura. Three of them were already in Seattle - they've been dancing with VamoLa for several years, put in their time there, logged the hours as leaders and teachers. Eventually they reached that inevitable point where they wanted to try it on their own.

The magical 4th component was Laura Costa, who descended from heaven with choirs of angels singing (or at least that's what it seemed like to us on the ground), bearing with her not only a stunning samba talent, magnetic stage presence and the biggest smile in the Western Hemisphere, but also a degree in dance! - including company management, marketing, and even the tax stuff! - complete fluency in Portuguese!, capoeira skills, amazing costume design! and great original choreography!! yowza!

At the time this was taking shape, I was living in Seattle and was, coincidentally, also starting a little samba group with a small group of hand-picked drummers. While at the same time working with VamoLa - for pay. So I ended up getting involved a bit with the new dance group too.

Some people asked me later if I'd felt uncomfortable starting another group that might potentially compete with VamoLa; but honestly, I never did. In fact it hadn't even crossed my mind. I'd even been chatting about my new group in the post-rehearsal VamoLa get-togethers. Honestly, after living in Rio for 2 years, the city with 500 samba groups, it just seems bizarre to me to think of having only 1 group in a city. Samba is free; nobody owns samba. And it just seems OBVIOUS that there ought to be a community group where people can start (and that's usually the biggest group and can put on the best parade presence), AND ALSO a really tight pro group (and they'll get the corporate party gigs). And a modern funk group (they'll play clubs) and a samba-reggae group and a maracatu group and a choro group and..... Nobody owns samba. The more the merrier.

VamoLa is the community group; they've chosen that niche very deliberately. They've even voted on it many times. They've made it very clear that they want to keep taking in, and training up, new community members; and that they DON'T want to try the option of having a sub-group that includes just the pro-level players. So.... I think there SHOULD be a tight pro group too. It is quite simply the right thing to do. The city deserves it; the top players and dancers need something to aim for, somewhere to push themselves, somewhere to grow; the others need to hear and see what it should really be like. And damn, the audience deserves it.

Don't get me wrong - VamoLa's very good, and they put on great shows. But there is a kind of a ceiling that community groups hit. Mainly, you can't tackle certain kinds of repertoire. If you're an upper level performer, your time in rehearsals ends up being entirely training beginners and coaching lower-level players. That's fun in its own way. But it doesn't give you any way to push your own skills higher.

It's time.

I came up with the name - Tudo Beleza. My little contribution. (well, Lisette had the "Tudo" part, actually.)

So they had their first Real Show. They've been dancing at a restaurant (Ibiza) every Thursday, but this Real Show was different. A whole stage show. Choreographies. Multiple costumes. Samba de roda, samba-reggae, as well as samba.

I went and played...

... and it was amazing.

They are the best dancers I've ever seen. The most skilled, the best outfits, the biggest smiles... and it doesn't hurt at all that they're all, all four of them, drop-dead gorgeous and hot as fire! But mostly, plain and simple, it's just about the best samba dancing I've ever seen. Including in Brazil.

And the crowd had SO much fun. The organizer told us afterwards that it was one of their most successful events ever. It was a family event, with lots of little kids in the audience, and the kids were just bouncing with excitement and had lots of questions in the question-and-answer period ("Do you ever fall off your high heels?" "How long does it take to put on your costume?" "How do you dance so fast?") And at the end everybody danced, and Laura led a dance workshop and all the moms and kids (and a few dads) got up on stage and just threw themselves into it! And we the band just played and played. I'd brought my shekere and got to do some real genuine Recife-style abe playing for the maracatu (that meant, I was dancing my ass off), and I got to play pandeiro and caixa a lot too. It was SO MUCH FUN.