Brazilian beat holds sway
Psychologist, actor, author and stage producer Pamela Stephenson-Connolly is prescribing a treatment of hip-swivelling dance pleasure to loosen up our rigid Western ways.
Stephenson-Connolly is the driving force behind Brazouka, a Brazilian dance show featuring lambazouk, the sultry love child of the lambada.
The Australian-raised wife of comedian Billy Connolly was in Perth yesterday with dancers from the show, which premiered in Edinburgh last month ahead of an Australian tour next month.
Stephenson-Connolly said she had been inspired to create the show after a stint as a finalist on BBC's Strictly Come Dancing and a trip to Brazil in 2012 that helped her confront her own body issues after a lifetime of anxiety.
"Most of my life, like many Western women, I have been very focused on my body," she said. "Things like shape and size are culturally prescribed. When I went to Brazil I looked around the beaches and I saw women of all shapes and sizes proud of the bodies. It was a huge relief for me. I just felt I could be an awful lot more accepting."
Brazouka opens at the Regal Theatre in Subiaco on October 23.
