Professional Biographies

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Robyn Chance

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Robyn Chance is a Texas-born interdisciplinary artist, cultural worker, and public arts organizer whose practice integrates portraiture, live painting, movement-based research, and large-scale community programming. Her work is grounded in the understanding that culture is transmitted through bodies, breath, rhythm, and relationship long before it is preserved through written archives or institutions. Across more than 20 years of professional practice, she has developed a body of work that treats creative practice as cultural care and public space as a site of memory.

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Robyn is Cherokee and Choctaw and Ashkenazi Jewish. Her leadership is shaped by responsibility to lineage, consent, and long-term cultural stewardship. She has been formally honored within Indigenous community contexts, including the receipt of a sacred feather through Cherokee and Choctaw elders, and has created live art within pow-wow settings. These experiences inform her approach to visibility as responsibility rather than performance, and to leadership as accountability rather than branding.

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Her artistic career spans studio painting, live performance, and gallery leadership. In her late twenties she founded Chance Gallery, gaining early experience in curatorial practice, artist support, and sustaining creative economies. She later co-founded and co-owned Wild Heartest, a visionary gallery on the Bayfront in Hilo, Hawaiʻi, which demonstrated the viability of spiritually rooted, community-centered visual art through strong early sales and public engagement. These experiences anchor her ability to steward both creative vision and operational reality.

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For nearly a decade, Robyn toured nationally as a professional dancer in Salsa and Bachata, closing shows at major congresses, teaching workshops across the United States, and directing three dance companies under Seduxion Company. In 2012 she spent the year primarily on tour, choreographing, teaching, and directing teams. This period built deep ties to Latin dance communities and international festival ecosystems that continue to inform her interdisciplinary programming.

Robyn’s live painting and performance work includes painting and dancing in concert with Noko for Medicine for the People in 2013, with the resulting work selling for 8,000 dollars, body painting collaborations for the G Franko runway show, and live painting at Divergence Festival, ZoukMX, and the Dallas Zouk and Lambada Festival. A near-death medical event in 2006 reshaped her orientation toward nervous system literacy, trauma-informed facilitation, and creative safety as artistic methodology.

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After more than a decade of housing instability and displacement, her return to Austin marked a commitment to rooting long-term cultural infrastructure locally. Chance Creative Collective emerges from that commitment, consolidating decades of interdisciplinary work into a sustainable, lineage-centered public arts practice.

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Edgar Fernandes

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Edghar Fhernandes serves in a senior leadership role as artist liaison, lead educator, and community steward within the Brazilian Zouk and Lambada ecosystem. He is a Brazilian Zouk and Lambada dancer, teacher, and choreographer affiliated with Solum Escola de Dança in São Paulo, one of the established institutions advancing both forms. With more than 10 years of documented, continuous engagement as an instructor, demonstrator, and cultural transmitter, Edghar is widely recognized for work that prioritizes social usability, musical intelligence, and embodied play over performance spectacle.

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Internationally, Edghar is best known through his long-term partnership with Nadyne Cruz, performing and teaching as Edgar and Nadine. Their work circulates extensively through festival demonstrations and educational platforms and is frequently described as marked by creativity, lightness, and clarity. Edghar’s movement vocabulary blends Lambada’s rhythmic drive with Brazilian Zouk’s elasticity, producing grounded, responsive partnership that remains accessible on the social dance floor.

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His sustained international presence includes repeated invitations to Zouk Day Congress, ZoukMX, Sampa Zouk Congress, and Barcelona Zouk World, reflecting long-term demand across multiple global circuits rather than isolated appearances. As an educator, Edghar is known for progressive instruction that establishes strong fundamentals before introducing elasticity, rotation, and counter-movement. This scaffolding approach allows advanced concepts to remain accessible to mixed-ability dancers and aligns directly with Chance Creative Collective’s commitment to long-term skill development, safety, and community continuity.

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Nadyne Cruz

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Nadyne Cruz, also known internationally as Nadine, is a Brazilian Zouk and Lambada dancer and teacher associated with Solum Escola de Dança in São Paulo. She is best known through her long-term partnership with Edghar Fhernandes.

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Her work is distinguished by smooth following, musical sensitivity, and grounded expressiveness. She emphasizes frame, axis, shared balance, softness, and safety, particularly in off-axis transitions and head movement contexts common to Zouk and Lambada.

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Nadyne appears regularly as a demonstrator and instructor at major international festivals and is recognized as a reference point for expressive, safe, and socially grounded following technique.

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Osei Bonsu

 

Osei Bonsu is the founder and lead organizer of the Austin Brazilian Zouk and Lambada community and serves as artist agent and cultural liaison for Chance Creative Collective. His work operates at the intersection of artistic stewardship, logistics, and cultural accountability, ensuring that international artists arrive into Austin through systems that are ethical, historically grounded, and equitable.

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Osei’s Ghanaian heritage directly informs how he frames Brazilian Zouk and Lambada as Afro-Indigenous diasporic practices rather than trend-based social dances. His understanding of rhythm, call and response, and embodied memory is shaped by lived cultural inheritance as well as global experience. Prior to his work in Austin, Osei volunteered with the United Nations World Food Programme in Ghana, supporting community-based initiatives centered on food security and equitable resource distribution. This experience sharpened his commitment to reciprocity rather than extraction when working across cultures.

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In Austin, Osei has spent years building infrastructure for Brazilian Zouk and Lambada that centers origin stories, including West and Central African movement traditions carried to Brazil through the transatlantic slave trade, Indigenous ritual dances from northern Brazil, and the regional development of Lambada in Pará. His leadership ensures that programming remains accountable both to local communities and to the global lineages that shape these forms.

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Paulo Victor

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Paulo Victor is an internationally recognized Brazilian Zouk performer, choreographer, and educator whose work is rooted in Lambada lineage and Afro-Indigenous movement traditions from northern Brazil. He is a nine-time Brazilian Zouk Champion and a two-time World Champion in the Zouk Teams category, distinctions that place him among the most decorated artists in the contemporary Zouk field.

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Paulo is a co-founder and director of Zouk United, a Miami-based dance school dedicated exclusively to Brazilian Zouk. Through this institution, he has trained thousands of dancers and instructors while maintaining strong ties to the cultural and historical roots of the form, including Carimbó rhythms and Afro-Brazilian movement systems shaped by the Atlantic slave trade.

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He has served as a teacher, judge, and competitor within the Brazilian Zouk World Championships ecosystem since its early editions, situating him inside the formal global infrastructure that trains, evaluates, and preserves the dance. His teaching emphasizes biomechanics, shared axis, musical precision, and partner clarity, always framed within historical and cultural context rather than presented as neutral technique.

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Within Chance Creative Collective, Paulo’s month-long residency in Austin represents sustained cultural transmission. His work converts international excellence into local capacity, allowing Austin dancers to build durable technique and embodied understanding over time rather than collecting isolated workshop experiences.​

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Luiza Teston

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Luiza Teston is an internationally touring Brazilian Zouk performer, choreographer, and educator recognized for musical intelligence, pedagogical clarity, and expressive partnership. She is a nine-time Brazilian Zouk Champion and a two-time World Champion in the Zouk Teams category, achievements that reflect both competitive excellence and long-term dedication to the form.

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Alongside Paulo Victor, Luiza is a co-founder of Zouk United and has served as a teacher, judge, and competitor within the Brazilian Zouk World Championships since its inception. Her role within these institutions reflects sustained trust in her ability to transmit, evaluate, and steward Brazilian Zouk at the highest level.

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Luiza’s pedagogy is distinguished by her ability to translate complex musical and structural concepts into accessible instruction without flattening cultural depth. She teaches timing, breath, elasticity, and listening as relational skills rather than stylistic embellishments. In Austin programming, her work strengthens follow technique, musical responsiveness, and partnership ethics, reinforcing Brazilian Zouk as a shared cultural language rather than a performance commodity.​​

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Pedro Castro

 

Pedro Castro is a Brazilian Zouk World Champion, internationally sought-after instructor, and certified judge with the Brazilian Zouk Dance Council. His work emphasizes connection mechanics, shared weight, and musical interpretation rooted in Brazilian social dance traditions.

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Pedro’s pedagogy focuses on structural clarity and relational ethics, supporting dancers in developing technique that is both precise and culturally grounded.

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Ana Reis

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Ana Reis is a Brazilian Zouk World Champion, internationally recognized instructor, and certified judge with the Brazilian Zouk Dance Council. Her teaching emphasizes musical sensitivity, timing, and embodied communication.

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Ana’s work supports scalable pedagogy, making advanced partnership principles teachable across diverse learning environments, which is critical for sustaining community-based dance ecosystems.

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Iago Hassuike

 

 

Iago Hassuike is a foundational figure in global Lambada culture and a director of the World Lambada Dance Council. He has spent decades stewarding Lambada lineage and guiding its evolution into Brazilian Zouk with accountability to origin communities.

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His leadership represents governance-level stewardship, including standards, historical grounding, and institutional continuity within Lambada and Brazilian Zouk worldwide.

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Vanessa Meirelles

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Vanessa Meirelles is a Brazilian Zouk and Lambada instructor with extensive international teaching experience. Her work emphasizes accessibility, clarity, and responsible transmission of lineage-based movement practices.

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She collaborates closely with Iago Hassuike in preserving Lambada and Brazilian Zouk as living cultural forms rooted in community responsibility.

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Raú Ferreira and Isa

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Raú Ferreira and Isa are internationally recognized Brazilian Zouk artists and multi-title champions whose work centers flow-based movement, musical intelligence, and deeply responsive partnership. Together, they are known for improvisational clarity and an expansive partnership vocabulary that supports adaptability, agency, and expressive nuance within the dance.

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Their shared pedagogy emphasizes embodied listening, safety, and creative choice, strengthening community-based transmission of Brazilian Zouk as a living social form. Raú’s teaching advances innovation that remains usable on the social dance floor, prioritizing cultural continuity over spectacle, while Isa’s approach foregrounds musical sensitivity and follow-forward agency, offering dancers tools for clarity, confidence, and connection.

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Gigi Ho

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Gigi Ho is an Austin-based Brazilian Zouk instructor whose work strengthens accessibility, retention, and community trust. She is known for inclusive teaching that supports first-time participants while maintaining technical integrity for developing dancers.

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Gigi’s contribution lies in the often invisible labor of welcoming, pacing, and building repeat participation. Through consistent weekly programming and community-centered instruction, she helps ensure that Brazilian Zouk in Austin remains sustainable, relational, and accessible across experience levels.

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Nhat Ho

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Nhat Ho is an Austin-based Brazilian Zouk instructor whose primary contribution is continuity. He anchors weekly practice pathways that transform visiting artists and major events into sustained community growth. In a cultural heritage framework, this role is essential, as forms survive through repetition, mentorship, and local rhythm rather than occasional spectacle.

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Nhat’s work focuses on building stable entry points for new dancers while supporting the development of intermediate and advanced practitioners. His steady presence ensures that international lineages remain embedded in Austin’s local ecosystem rather than passing through it.

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Preston Makana Curley

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Preston Makana Curley is a Hawaiian videographer and editor whose work with Makana Media focuses on documentation as preservation. His role supports archival integrity, public record, and future stewardship of cultural knowledge.

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His documentation practice emphasizes process, context, and care rather than spectacle.