The Forbidden Dance

The Forbidden Dance (also released as The Forbidden Dance is Lambada) is a 1990 drama film starring former Miss USA Laura Harring. Made to cash in on the Lambada dance craze, it opened on the same day (March 16, 1990) as its competitor, Lambada.

Synopsis

Nisa (Laura Harring) is the princess of a northern Brazilian tribe who comes to Los Angeles to stop an American corporation from destroying her rainforest home. With her is tribal shaman Joa (Sid Haig), who uses black magic to get past the company guards and see the chairman of the corporation, resulting in his arrest.

Left to fend for herself in Los Angeles alone, Nisa, with the help of Carmen (Angela Moya), finds work in a Beverly Hills mansion as the servant of an uptight couple whose son, Jason (Jeff James), lives only to dance. After spying on Nisa as she dances provocatively in her bedroom, Jason takes her out to a club. She is rejected by Jason's friends, and he is berated by his parents for dating the help.

Nisa runs away and gets a job at Xtasy, a sleazy dance joint/brothel, as a dance partner for male customers. Jason's friends visits the club and want to dance with Nisa, but Nisa refuses to dance with them. One of Jason's friends (Kenny Johnson) becomes sleazy towards her and she knees him in the groin. Later, the friends tell Ashley, Jason's girlfriend, and she runs back and tells Jason his little girlfriend is a sleaze working at Xtasy. He becomes morose, turns away from his buddies and girlfriend Ashley (Barbra Brighton) and goes to Xtasy to try to take Nisa out of the place. A bouncer beats up the would-be rescuer and prepares to deflower Nisa, but fortunately, Joa walks in and magically stuns the attacker, which clears the place.

Lambada

Lambada ( pronunciation ) is a dance from Pará, Brazil. Lambada is an Afro-Brazilian dance authentic to people of Black/African descent who brought much of their music and dance culture with them into Brazil upon arrival into the country during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The Afro-Brazilian dance became internationally popular in the 1980s, especially in Latin America and Caribbean countries. It has adopted aspects of dances such as forró, salsa, merengue, maxixe and the carimbó.

Lambada is generally a partner dance. The dancers generally dance with arched legs, with the steps being from side to side, turning or even swaying, and in its original form never front to back, with a pronounced movement of the hips. At the time when the dance became popular, short skirts for women were in fashion and men wore long trousers, and the dance has become associated with such clothing, especially for women wearing short skirts that swirl up when the woman spins around, typically revealing 90s-style thong underwear.

Forbidden Dance

Forbidden Dance (天使のキス, Tenshi no Kisu) is a shōjo manga by Hinako Ashihara consisting of four volumes. It was published in English by TokyoPop in the fall of 2003 and is currently out of print in the United States.

Plot

Aya Fujii is a high school student who eats, sleeps, and breathes ballet, but an accident during the National Competition causes an ankle injury for her that left her unable to dance for nearly a year. Although Aya recovers physically, she has not recovered psychologically. It isn't until she is invited to watch the performance of a small ballet troupe, called COOL, that Aya comes out of her funk. Now she has a new goal, to dance on stage with the charismatic leader of COOL: Akira Hibiya. However, since Akira has an incredibly strong presence and powerful charisma many girls have made such proclamations that have been ignored, thus Aya was labeled a fanatical fangirl and promptly escorted from the theater where the performance took place.

As the story progresses Aya struggles to prove her worth as a ballet dancer and earn her place in COOL while struggling with more typical teenage concerns such as grades and her friends. While the main focus is Aya throughout the plot line the readers learn more about the backgrounds of most of the supporting characters. Aya herself is not left out of the character development as she refines her ballet technique and matures emotionally throughout the narrative.