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 "Why should you have a booty if you're not gonna shake your booty?" Edilson Lima asks a group at Chicago's HotHouse in his sexy, Brazilian voice. Teaching samba lessons as the band Chicago Samba plays on stage, Lima is a fixture at many Latin events in Chicago, including weekly club performances at Pasha, The Note or HotHouse.
Born and raised in Brazil, Lima is a professional dancer and dance teacher by trade and also an experienced aerobics instructor.
Combining those talents, his new exercise DVD, "SamBody," a samba-infused aerobics DVD is being recognized nationally. It's already a winner in the Health & Fitness category of the 26th Annual Telly Awards, the premier award honoring the finest in video and film productions.
And as more people learn about the DVD, more morning TV shows are getting Lima on air to demonstrate his unique and high-energy workout.
Brazilian music, after all, is not something one can hear, just sit still and listen to. Tapping your feet becomes dancing in no time. Lima knows this.
He combines the rhythm, passion and sensual samba dance to his exercise program. And marketed as "exer-tainment" - entertaining exercise - the DVD is not like other workout tapes on the market.
It's a point producer Jonathan Jutsen of LeVita Creations drives home, "Because it's so fun and the dancers are so sexy, this is the kind of DVD you want to watch even if you never did a minute of exercise."
Yet, this high-energy workout is the type that's catching on around the country. At Crunch Fitness in Los Angeles, for example, they're beginning a program called Rock Star Brazil that also pulls in samba steps to aerobic workouts.
But "SamBody" is something that people can learn and use in the privacy of their home. Unlike other exercise tapes though, it is not an exercise routine.
Instead, real dance steps that one could translate onto any club dance floor, are the mainstay of the workout. And the moves work every part of the body - from legs and buttocks to cardiovascular.
And because samba is such a huge part of Brazil's Carnaval, at the end of the DVD, Lima and his dancers don authentic Carnaval outfits to bring the colorful experience and sexiness of the workout full circle.
Currently available on their Web site (www.sambody.com), the DVD retails for $19.95 and is also being distributed nationally to local stores.
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