By Geovana PERES DA COSTA
If anyone was to ask you about Brazil and culture, what would you answer? Can I guess some possible answers? “Football, Pelé, Neymar, Carnaval, favelas/guetos, Samba …But it would mostly be around football.” I would be very happy though, if you answered something else, but don’t worry because this is not your fault, this is what the media shows and emphasizes about our country all the time. Let me tell you another perspective and reality of Brazilian culture, not from the media, but richer than you can ever imagine. Let’s talk about Brazilian Dance Culture and our beautiful Brazilian traditional dances, which is indeed, not just Samba …
The dance and the cultural questions in Brazil were always very present but less spread, since the original people before the European invasion, until diverse African people that arrived afterwards. “Each specific traditional dance has a meaning and a special occasion that these people would dance it. The source of the problem started with the societal view related to the issue of colonization, because with the Europeans we had a categorisation and a hierarchisation of the dances, putting the European ones in highlight and all the others in the shadows. But the main fact is that Brazil is indeed a “country that dances”, because dancing has been very present in our culture since the start. We have a really big country and so many ways to manifest dance, there is no homogeneous way in which society views dance.” – Jessé Cruz – teacher, PhD in Education, artist and researcher
How has Brazilian culture used dance as a means of artistic expression to go beyond entertainment? We can not forget that we are speaking about a very diverse country in a way of matrices: African, Indigenous, Portuguese, beyond American and Eurocentric that have arrived in our country in contemporary times. “The Brazilian dance is present in the dance from the tradition people called folkloric. Samba and Afro-diasporic rhythms, in the context of popular festivals and, of course, in scenic dance, meaning dance that is part of the globalized artistic market and organized in professional companies and/or independent collectives.” – Carol Pas de Barros, Brazilian dancer and anthropologist.
What is the source of each Brazilian traditional dance and their evolutions? Each of them has an origin and a particular development. “I tend to differentiate popular dances and traditional dances, and I also differentiate traditional dances and folk dances. I recognize that gafieira, samba rock, forró, xote, funk, arrocha, among others, are popular dances, dances that have gained a lot of popularity over time (or even at certain historical moments) and that are practiced in many different social contexts in Brazil. As for traditional dances, I usually associate them with dances such as jongo, samba, maculelê, lundu, traditional dances practiced in indigenous villages, etc. These are dances that date back to ancient times and that are passed down from generation to generation. When such dances take on scenic dimensions, in other words, they are staged or exhibited, we have a “folkloric” presentation, hence the idea of folk dances, but you have to bear in mind that they are different things.” – Ivan Bernadelli, Brazilian dancer, researcher of Brazilian based traditional dances and choreographer.
If we go outside of popular traditional dance in Brazil, we also have very interesting scenic dance that constitutes the dance history in Brazil. “We can mention the works of Grupo Corpo (such as Maria Maria,1976) and Ballet Stagium (such as Kuarup,1977), shows that bring the dimension of, in the first case, the African matrix and the indigenous one in the second. In the context of the great European wars, artists from Europe migrated to Brazil and helped shape ballet in the country. We can mention Maria Olenewa, Tatiana Leskova, Renée Gumiel and Marika Gidali among others. On one hand, there are dances that represent political resistance, on the other, there are the official dance companies. They are often set up to represent or elevate the state, sometimes fulfilling the function of forging a national identity, such as the Balé da Cidade de São Paulo (created in 1968 as the Corpo de Baile Municipal) and the Balé do Theatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro (founded in 1927 by Maria Olenewa).” – Contribution by Carol Pas de Barros.
A positive side of dance culture in Brazil is that we have engagement with some political institutions, and they are very necessary for the promotion and maintenance of dance structures. A good example is the FUNARTE institution, which connects the entire country. Nowadays we live in Brazil in a process of “editorializing” art and culture, and it is not possible to say if the same happens in other countries.
“Editorializing” means that in Brazil, a large part of artistic production is regulated by the government through laws that distribute public funds to projects approved in selection processes, which obey a variety of criteria. Artists and associated production companies must apply to these highly competitive selections and compete with each other to get their artistic project funded. “It is also possible to get sponsorship directly from private companies. Thus, stage dance in Brazil has a relatively low number of official dance companies (i.e. directly linked to municipalities, states, etc.) compared to Europe, but a large number of private companies and independent collectives, which make their productions viable through the incentives mentioned.” – Carol Pas de Barros
The efforts to preserve Brazilian dance culture are huge because of the size of the country and the diverse style and expression of dance that has been built up,The securing of money destined for the arts and dance field, appropriate spaces, documents legalized of the cultural patrimony of the country are all part of this. “Although we have these difficulties, we also see a lot of effort on the part of both private and public initiatives in favor of our cultural heritage. An example for that is the “Dossier of Registered Cultural Goods”, as well as other initiatives by IPHAN (National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage).” – Ivan Bernadelli
With this brief overview of dance culture in Brazil, we can reflect on why Brazil is still so much just one sport and why this is a source of so much prestige and money. Although Brazil has a strong dance culture and talents, unfortunately this is not present in general Brazilian society and culture. The reality in Brazil is that while one soccer player is valued at thousands of euros, a dancer who was in the dance school for 8 years doesn’t even have a perspective of value. “ The problem is not the football, but how we look at the internal cultural market in Brazil. Besides this, the cultural market is usually very elitist and doesn’t have much space for the new. For me, the big topic and problem is that the dance field is still in the hands of few people that sometimes don’t understand the necessities of each place that produces dance.” – Jessé Cruz
Another very important topic to consider is if there is a confusion of terms related to what is “art” and what is “entertainment” and also a possibility of the Brazilian public and society devaluing dance. It is very hard in general to have art separated from entertainment in a country that doesn’t have so many options. Sometimes the artist needs to enter a more commercial niche, such as dance for TV, tourism, etc.
“It’s very common in Brazil for the same dancer to move along this continuum during their career, sometimes moving closer to the “art” pole, sometimes to the “entertainment” pole, and often this can get so messed up that it is no longer possible to make this distinction.” Carol Pas de Barros
Our Brazilian dance culture is very rich, but perhaps less widespread. Our artists struggle with not having enough places to dance professionally and to be better positioned in society countrywide. In addition, we often don’t have the much needed space to talk and to have appropriate information. This is a short brief on the huge and diverse culture of a very rich cultural country called Brazil.
