Nancy Merrill’s Photo Challenge this week is movement.

In the early 1980s, when I was young and spry, I was living in Brazil and loved carnaval. I have never been much of a dancer, but I love to move to music and I did manage to roughly imitate the hip movement of samba. I actually learned the leg and foot movements recently, while taking a Zumba class. But now my knees are arthritic and hurt almost every time I try to do it! So I admire watching others!

I have posted a couple of photos from 90 Miles Cuban Café on the night they had a Brazilian band, Bossa Tres, for Becky’s Month of Squares challenge and Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge. I didn’t post the dancing, however! Most of these photos of the dancers are blurred, of course – because the dancers are moving FAST! (Also it was sort of dark in the café and I only had my cellphone camera to take photos.)

The band invited people to dance but this mostly American audience didn’t volunteer, not knowing what to do. At 9:45, the official dancers had not yet arrived, so the dance floor was still mostly empty. That was when friends of the band got up to show their samba moves.

Shortly after 10 o’clock, the two official dancers arrived, scantily clad, all feathery and glittery, to show their stuff.



One of the dancers gets a man from the audience to come out and “dance” with her, but he mostly looked bewildered.

He stayed out there as long as he could without seeming rude! The dancing went on until the end of the band’s set, around 10:30.



I  took a couple of videos, which I’ve been unable to download, so here is a demonstration from YouTube. (Watch at least into the 2nd minute, that’s when they do the fast hip movements.)