Brazilian Dance Class

This class is part of Travel Through Dance, a week long series classes organized by Dance for All Bodies and Wheel the World. Together, we bring a virtual, accessible and engaging travel experience to you through using music, dance and culture. Join us for a week of classes that will take you from the Bronx to the South of Spain, and through many more eras and cultures. All our classes are taught and designed to be inclusive to people of all abilities. If you have any questions about accessibility, please email danceforallbodies@gmail.com. 

Stephanie Bastos’ innovative dance class challenges and inspires by creating a sacred space for all bodies to be included in the movement experience. Warm- up, skill- build, find your edge and play with Improvisation and Choreography rooted in Contemporary Dance techniques and African polyrhythms. This movement experience is designed for everyone!  

All abilities, ages and experiences welcome.   

Zoom Link Information:

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81359286118?pwd=ZzRzVzhma3hzaldVTEFwLzRReTMvQT09

Meeting ID: 813 5928 6118

Password: 9Lie5q

This class is FREE, but we welcome donations on a sliding scale from $5-15. Please consider donating here: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?token=vhKOYi9Uie3TZmtpOgm0-h0fbMp3iXVTVDZqQziKIf26t4kAgWCi4kSgWyr2nhFjW9K360&fromUL=true&country.x=US&locale.x=en_US 

At Dance for All Bodies, we believe that everybody can dance; all you need is a body and willingness to try! If you are a wheelchair user, have an amputation or use another assistive devices and want to try hip-hop, this class is for you. We welcome people of all abilities in this class, so whether you have a disability or not, please come dance with us and remember to bring your family and friends!   

The instructor for this class will be Stephanie Bastos. We are really excited to be working with Stephanie again for this class.   Stephanie Bastos is the daughter of Bernadette Chaves Nunes and Aluizio Ribeiro Bastos, started her performance career as a child with the Miami Ballet and in her teens, became one of the founding members of the internationally acclaimed Isadora Duncan Dance Ensemble of Miami, FL directed by Andrea Seidel and featured in Isadora Duncan Dance and Repertory by Princeton Book Company. As a pre-professional, she was awarded scholarships to train at American Dance Festival, Jacob’s Pillow and Bates Dance Festival after losing her leg in a tragic car accident and subsequently retraining herself to dance with a prosthetic leg. Since then, she has received her BFA in Dance from New World School of the Arts and has been performing, touring and teaching Contemporary Dance throughout the United States, Germany, Poland, Argentina and Brazil. She has trained with master teachers; Martha Mahr, Thomas Armour, Andrea Seidel, Julia Levien, Peter London, Donald McKayle, Chuck Davis, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Reginald Yates, Tania Santiago and Mestre King among others. Winner of the 2011 San Francisco "Izzies” Award for Outstanding Achievement in Performance Ensemble with Ase West Dance Theater Collective, she has also worked with the Urban Bush Women, Axis Dance Company, Deep Waters Dance Theater, Aguas Da Bahia and Ron Brown’s/ EVIDENCE as a guest performer for the “Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth”, Soundsuits exhibit at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF. 

Dance for All Bodies is a non-profit providing dance classes for people of all abilities. Wheel the World is an organization which empower people with disabilities to explore the world without limits! They do this by offering accessible travel experiences in +40 destinations around the world.

The culture of Brazil is primarily Western and is derived from Portuguese culture, but presents a very diverse nature showing that an ethnic and cultural mixing occurred in the colonial period involving mostly Indigenous people of the coastal and most accessible riverine areas, Portuguese people and African people.  Amerindian people and Africans played a large role in the formation of Brazilian language, cuisine, music, dance, and religion.