For this 2014 Biennial Dance Parade, Dominique Hervieu and her team have chosen to make this tenth edition an anniversary, a big party, a celebration of madness, playfulness, extravagance and inventiveness, and also an opportunity to ‘return to the sources and earliest influences from Rio by “carnivalising” life, … creating the marvellous, the poetic from simplicity and everyday objects’.
Like the Rio Carnival, the strength of the Dance Biennial Parade lies in its ability to bring together different ‘worlds’, to promote encounters between professionals and amateurs, to reinforce interculturality and collective and individual fulfilment through a powerful and meaningful project. Crossing paths, finding each other or meeting up again for a dance, together!
To make this 10th anniversary edition a tribute to the Rio Carnival, I’m going to focus on the Brazilian expression ‘cabra da peste’, a very popular expression used in the Nordeste of Brazil, Recife, Fortaleza, Joao Pessoa… and more particularly in the regions furthest from the urban centres.
The word ‘cabra’, used by the Portuguese in the north-east of Brazil during the colonial period, was a term used to designate something evil, dangerous or painful – in short, something negative. By extension, the expression ‘cabra da peste’ was attributed to any evil, frightening, cold and cruel individual. Over time, however, the meaning of ‘cabra da peste’ has evolved and now refers to a strong individual, admired for his worth, courage, virtue and generosity. The phrase therefore encompasses a notion of courage and qualifies a certain concept of ‘being well together’. As if to remind us, like a leitmotif, that together we will be stronger and more solid.
Taken on a global scale, a opera do povo is intended to be a meeting place, a crossroads, a square where groups and people can come together to tell their stories to others, to the world! Building on gestures, each one a contribution to inventing, creating and dreaming together…