This is the closest you will get to learning samba without leaving your desk. The one-hour special “Dance the World“, that premiered on The Travel Channel, in the US, last Monday, shows how award-winner ballroom dancer Jaycee Gossett goes to Bahia after a crash course that might enable her to dance in Carnival with gusto. Of course, she realized that ballroom has nothing to do with the real deal.
“Dance the World” has the inevitable cliches (lots of mentions to sexuality, booties and Brazilian wax), but the quality of the show overcomes that. Watch this delicious sample:
Bonus 1: finding samba and beauty in a Salvador favela (shanty town) and partying with Olodum samba group.
Bonus 2: in this little teaser, Jaycee asks passing by new yorkers if they know what samba is (“a sandwich?”) and if they can dance it.