HAU 2: April 20 – 22; 8 pm
»Raio X« (X-rays)
MEMBROS CIA. DE DANÇA, MACAÉ
talk with the audience: April 22, after the performance
Two and a half hours by bus north of Rio de Janeiro lies the coastal city of Macaé, Since the eighties, more the eighty percent of Brazilian oil has been produced here offshore. The number of inhabitants has since tripled to over 150.000. Aside from Brazilian and foreign specialists, the oil boom has attracted thousands of mostly untrained workers from the poor regions of the country looking for work in Macaé. The influx continues in spite of the city’s lack of infrastructural ability to handle the growing population and the enormous speed by which the favelas are growing. This direct coexistence of wealth and poverty brings with it an ample supply of social dynamite. Macaé is one of the cities with the highest crime rate.
The Cultural Center founded eight years ago by Taís Vieira and Paulo Azevedo lies within in this broken city like an island. It is the home of one of the most exciting hip-hop companies in South America: Membros cia. de dança.
»Raio X«: Texts written by
prisoners about the Brazilian prison system form the starting point
for the research of choreographer Taís Vieira. The performance
speaks of the prison uprisings and massacres of 1992.
idea, directors: Paulo Azevedo, Taís Vieira
artistic director: Paulo Azevedo
choreography: Taís Vieira
dance: Amilton Vilarindo, Filipe Itagiba, João Carlos Silva,
Mirila Greicy, Luiz Henrique, Jean Gomes
light design: Jose Martins
music: Titãs, Pink Floyd, Pavilhão 9, Elza Soares
production, tour management: Marine Budin, El Climamola
sponsorship: Prefeitura Municipal de Macaé, Fundação
Macaé de Cultura
Paulo Azevedo is a sports scientist, director of the Compagnie Membros Cia de Dança, Brazilian scholar of Hip-Hop and founder of the school Dança de Rua Paulo Azevedo (Paulo Azevedo School for Street Dance). He is the author of “Dança de Rua – contador de histórias" (Street Dancers – Storytellers), “A Descoberta de Talentos nas Escolas Municipais de Macaé” (The Discovery of Talent in the Communal Schools of Macaé) and “Dança de Rua: uma pesquisa de socialização" (Street Dance: a Socialization Study).
Taís Vieira studied dance at the UNIVERCIDADE Rio de Janeiro, director of the Centro Integrado de Estudos do Movimento Hip Hop (CIEM-h2) (Integrated Center for the Study of the Hip-Hop Movement) and choreographer for the Compagnie Membros Cia de dança with a focus on prison inmate literature.
Dilma Negreiros documented the Compagnie Membros Cia de Dança’s journey from the city of Macaé in the state of Rio de Janeiro to the festival Dies de Dansa, an event organized as part of the forum Las Culturas de Barcelona 2004 (for more information see: http://www.clickmacae.com.br). The website features an entry praising the group’s guest performance at the 17th International Choreographer’s Competition in 2003 in Hannover. The group will be touring throughout Europe from January until July 2007. The nine dancers from Macaé will also be performing in Finland, Sweden, England and most likely also in Argentine und Chile. Their new piece will be premiered in October in Spain.
“The company Membros Cia de Dança is composed of dancers from the age of 17 to 26. Their work aims at social integration and goes beyond a simple politics of donation. […] These young dancers, who have meanwhile become full professionals, originally came from community schools. Scholarships made it possible for them to attend street dance classes, thereby introducing them to the arts”, writes the journalist Dilma Negreiros.
She points out: “The company uses street dance and contemporary dance as means of group identity production, thereby acting as a kind of pamphlet to discuss the serious problems facing Brazilian society today.“
“Raio-X” combines elements of street art and hip-hop movement. These styles, developed in the fringe districts of the city, have had a massive influence on many aspects of contemporary art today.
The dancers in “Raio-X” present excerpts of stories from outsiders or prison inmates. “We can’t spend our entire life correcting the social evils of society that actually require political solutions. Everyone praises us for our dedicated work, but nothing changes for the ‘moleque’, the street children living beside the street gutters”, Paulo point out in the internet magazine Revistatal ( http://www.revistatal.com.br).