Zouk Nation - "Zouk is the dance of the 21st Century"

Nicholas Bambo, “The Duke of Zouk,” grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. Straight out of college he went to work as a producer and director for the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute in Los Angeles, which is known for having produced such talents as Robert DeNiro, Al Paccino and Angelina Jolie.

After leaving Los Angeles he spent three years studying and working overseas in Kyoto, Japan, where he founded and served as creative director of the successful Dark Horse Theater Group.

In a career that spans more than twenty years he has  a long of accomplishments including working as a playwright, a screenwriter, a director and a producer.

Nicholas was first bitten by the dancing bug in 2007 and just after studying zouk for six weeks,  he hopped on a plane to check out the zouk community in Amsterdam. Upon his return to New York he started up Zouk Nation to help educate and incur the appreciation of zouk music and Brazilian zouk dancing.

He has since gone on to create and produce some of the most successful and largest zouk events in the North America, including Zouk in Central Park, four Brazilian Zouk Boat Cruises and has been an active participant in the annual Dance Parade for three years in a row.

Cyrus is an experienced web professional, excelling at developing complex and dynamic sites. He is thrilled to be a part of the Zouk Nation staff, and enjoyed developing this site. He hopes Zouk Nation will succeed in building the Zouk community and broadening awareness of the art form.

As a self-taught programmer, Cyrus learned web development by working on his high school website back in St. Paul, MN, and by developing his own sites when he moved to New York City last year. He is now an active freelance developer, and advertises his services at web.cyruscollier.com.

Aria started dancing zouk/lambada, samaba, and salsa in 1997 and became hooked (especially to zouk). He stopped dancing zouk/lambada actively in 2000 and restarted in 2007.

He currently works as an assistant instructor at the Sandra Cameron Dance Center in New York City. He is a multi-talented individual who is held in high regard by his colleagues in the New York scene.

Berg Chabot is a well known and respected photography in Holland who has been documenting the local zouk and salsa scene for years now. Many of his beautiful color photos can be found on the dance section of the Zouk Nation website.

Berg became interested in dancing when he was studying computer science at the university and looking for a distraction he became interested in salsa. He credits Claudio Gomes with being the person who originally got him hooked on zouk. Taking photos of the zouk scene he saw as just an opportunity to take his two passions -zouk and photography- and combine them into one. He originally started taking photos at a young age, but has never had no formal training as a photographer. He says that he just lets his eyes tell him if it’s a good photo or not.

Currently, he shoots about 300 pictures a week at zouk and salsa parties. As a result, he has about 25,000 photos on line, which can be viewed by going to his Flickr account at www.flickr.com/photos/berg-chabot/sets/