It's appropriate that the Ordway Center booked DanceBrazil during the Olympics as part of its Black History Month celebrations.
Photos by DanceBrazil The Friday evening performance at the St Paul venue was as impressive in its show of strength and virtuosity as some of the feats on display in Vancouver. The combination of nearly naked bodies and refined technique at the Ordway was also a vivid reminder that for all its horror, slavery spread vibrant African-derived culture throughout the Americas. The performers in St Paul, all from northern Brazil and all trained by DanceBrazil founder and choreographer Jelon Vieira, combined the Afro-Brazilian martial arts form known as capoeira with African and modern dance. Like Santeria, voodoo and the Yoruba religion, in which slaves worshipped African deities as Christian ones, capoeira grew during slavery as a way of preserving African culture while subverting that peculiar institution. Capoeira is a method of fighting that slaves disguised as dance so that they could practice it openly without arousing suspicion. It has roots in Angola, home area of many of the captives who were shipped to Brazil.
At the Ordway, the choreography, twinned to music by Tote Gira, Heito Villa-Lobos, Cesar Michilles and Nana Vasconcelos, wore its roots proudly in two mesmerizing suites. The first, "Banguela," was an at once playful and intense piece about spiritual preparation. For example, the dancers leaned all the way back, very slowly, until nearly touching the ground. They sprung in the air like gazelles. They bound across the stage in tight formations, somersaulting like the acrobatic gymnasts that they are.
The second suite, "Memoria," showed the African roots of modern Brazilian culture, with ritualistic athletic movements that celebrate the body. The choreography centered on courtship and play, with lots of sassy shimmying by the three young women of the company and with young men displaying for attention. Much of the dance was clearly dangerous especially since, as Vieira explained in a post-show discussion, many of the capoeira elements were improvised. That explains the one collision among two of his dancers, neither of whom was seriously hurt. That sense of danger added to the thrill of a DanceBrazil concert that was a display of impressive muscle control, fluid rhythms and propulsive bodies hurtling across the Ordway stage.
