Dance Academy is an Australian children's television drama. The show airs on ABC1 and ABC3 in Australia, and on ZDF in Germany. Series one premiered in Australia on 31 May 2010, the second series began on 12 March 2012, and series three began on 8 July 2013.
Dance Academy features Tara Webster (Xenia Goodwin), a new student at Australia's National Academy of Dance. The show presents the students at the Academy learning the intricacies of ballet and dance, and is primarily shown from Tara's perspective, along with fellow first year students Kat Karamakov (Alicia Banit), Abigail Armstrong (Dena Kaplan), Sammy Lieberman (Tom Green), Christian Reed (Jordan Rodrigues), and third year student Ethan Karamakov (Tim Pocock).
Dance Academy was announced as having been renewed for a second series of 26 episodes on 15 July 2010. Casting calls were issued on 14 September 2010, and filming took place between 31 January and 4 August 2011 in and around Sydney. The series premiered on ABC3 on 12 March 2012, and concluded on 24 April 2012. The series was again executive produced by Joanna Werner. Series two featured Tara and the other students' second year at the Academy, and their efforts to make it through to represent Australia at a major ballet competition, the Prix de Fonteyn.
Coordinates: 10°S 52°W / 10°S 52°W / -10; -52
Brazil (i/brəˈzɪl/; Portuguese: Brasil [bɾaˈziw] ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: República Federativa do Brasil, listen ), is the largest sovereign state in both South America and the Latin American region. It is the world's fifth-largest country, both by geographical area and by population. It is the largest Portuguese-speaking country in the world, and the only one in the Americas.
Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Brazil has a coastline of 7,491 km (4,655 mi). It borders all other South American countries except Ecuador and Chile and occupies 47.3 percent of the continent of South America. Its Amazon River basin includes a vast tropical forest, home to diverse wildlife, a variety of ecological systems, and extensive natural resources spanning numerous protected habitats. This unique environmental heritage makes Brazil one of 17 megadiverse countries, and is the subject of significant global interest and debate regarding deforestation and environmental protection.
"Aquarela do Brasil" (Portuguese: [akwaˈɾɛlɐ du bɾaˈziw], Watercolor of Brazil), known in the English-speaking world simply as "Brazil", is one of the most famous Brazilian songs, written by Ary Barroso in 1939.
Ary Barroso wrote "Aquarela do Brasil" in early 1939, when he was prevented from leaving his home one rainy night due to a heavy storm. Its title, a reference to watercolor painting, is a clear reference to the rain. He also wrote "Três Lágrimas" (Three teardrops) on that same night, before the rain ended.
Describing the song in an interview to Marisa Lira, of the newspaper Diário de Notícias, Barroso said that he wanted to "free the samba away from the tragedies of life, of the sensual scenario already so explored". According to the composer, he "felt all the greatness, the value and the wealth of our land", reliving "the tradition of the national panels".
Initially, he wrote the first chords, which he defined as "vibrant", and a "plangent of emotions". The original beat "sang on [his] imagination, highlighting the sound of the rain, on syncope beats of fantastic tambourins". According to him, "the rest came naturally, music and lyrics at once". He declared to have felt like another person after writing the song.
Brasil, also known as Hy-Brasil or several other variants, is a phantom island said to lie in the Atlantic Ocean west of Ireland. Irish myths described it as cloaked in mist except for one day every seven years, when it became visible but still could not be reached.
The etymology of the names Brasil and Hy-Brasil is unknown, but in Irish tradition it is thought to come from the Irish Uí Breasail (meaning "descendants (i.e., clan) of Breasal"), one of the ancient clans of northeastern Ireland. cf. Old Irish: Í: island; bres: beauty, worth, great, mighty.
Despite the similarity, the name of the country Brazil has no connection to the mythical islands. The South American country was at first named Ilha de Vera Cruz (Island of the True Cross) and later Terra de Santa Cruz (Land of the Holy Cross) by the Portuguese navigators who discovered the land. After some decades, it started to be called "Brazil" (Brasil, in Portuguese) due to the exploitation of native Brazilwood, at that time the only export of the land. In Portuguese, brazilwood is called pau-brasil, with the word brasil commonly given the etymology "red like an ember", formed from Latin brasa ("ember") and the suffix -il (from -iculum or -ilium).