She is already on stage when the audience enters the room. In pink shorts and a black T-shirt, on electrifying percussions, the Brazilian dancer Tamires Costa shakes the shaker with her moods. At full speed, she unpacks a compilation of movements and postures. The clichés that stick to the body of the black woman are knocking out each other. Sexual object, burlesque figure, bananas to her ears like Joséphine Baker, Tamires Costa has fun with the stereotypes that she endorses by sending them waltz with a grimace or a blow of the shoulder.
This stormy solo, titled Let it burn, co-created with the choreographers Marcela Levi and Lucia Russo, opened, Wednesday September 8, at the Espace Cardin, in Paris, the program bringing together ten Brazilian choreographers invited by Lia Rodrigues as part of her “Portrait” offered until Saturday December 11 by the Fall Festival. “I wanted to present to the French public a small sample of Brazilian artistic thought, explains this figure of the live performance. People often ask me about the dance of my country. Brazil is huge with a great diversity of ways to dance. Impossible to speak in the singular. “
Of which act with the presence of various artists, including Marcelo Evelin, Volmir Cordeiro or Thiago Granato. Among the themes dear to these offensive choreographers, that of the representations of the black body on stage is often mentioned. “We actually question what is expected of a black interpreter but without providing an answer elsewhere”, commented Marcela Levi and Lucia Russo. At the head of the company Improvavel Produçoes since 2010, they have been collaborating for six years with the dancer Tamires Costa. “We suggested that she work from a collection of strong personalities, including Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Joséphine Baker, Brazilian actor Grande Otelo or even German dancer Valeska Gert … which she incorporated intensities, rhythms , sounds. We try to dismantle the clichés by switching from one to the other to evoke the fact that we do not have a fixed and assigned identity. ”
Cristina Moura, choreographer: “I don’t want to look back on the past, repeat the history of slavery, the ancestors, the diaspora…”
“But does it exist only the black body, declares, provocatively, the dancer and choreographer Cristina Moura. It is time to talk about this. I personally need to discuss it even if it is not easy. ” Selected by the Brazilian newspaper O Globo as one of the best performances of 2019, its offensive piece Ägô (“Take your space” in Yoruba) – which was on display from September 16 to 19 at the Centquatre in Paris – is based on the work of many writers, including Achille Mbembe and Frantz Fanon. “I don’t want to look back on the past, repeat the history of slavery, the ancestors, the diaspora…, she specifies. We know all this but it always comes back. I also do not want to recall the photos of the voluptuous body, available. It’s all part of me, but you have to move, move forward, deploy a new imagination of a body, Brazilian, feminine, dancing, black. ” She adds : “I live in 2021, I am a contemporary artist and I want to talk about today’s issues: feminism, digital, refugees, transgender people…”
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