HAU 1: 16th – 17th April, 7.30 pm
Marcelo Evelin / Demolition Inc.
»Bull Dancing / urro de omi boi«
German Premier / Talk with the audience: 17th April, after the performance
Bull Dancing is a dance, theater and music piece that is based on a traditional
parade with roots in Northeastern Brazil, the Bumba Meu Boi. In telling the
story of the death and resurrection of a bull, it originally has satirical,
funny and tragic elements and is accompanied by dance, song and percussion.
The story is about Catrina and Chico: she is pregnant and longs for the tongue
of a bull. Catrina convinces her husband to kill the master’s bull, a
bewitched animal that can dance. Even today the Mumba Meu Boi is performed
all throughout Brazil as a collective ritual with great socio-political importance.
By deconstructing the folkloristic elements, Bull Dancing returns to the origins
of the ritual. In its images it is an act of “groping” through
the body’s internal organs; this is represented in the actual piece as
an allegory. The body is where tradition survives: it carries the thoughts
and actions that have created valid forms and meaning up until now. In the
piece the body serves as a metaphor for this sacred and profane bull that lives
in us all: straight from the gut, vulnerable, transmutable, temporary, unique
and universal!
Bull Dancing is a piece made of flesh and blood about the daily rituals of
death and resurrection. It demystifies cultural and geographic boundaries in
a world of global action; it reveals our individual and social conflicts. The
six performers contribute their own history of violence, fragility, wild desires
and horrible doubts, their trivial joys and hopes between the animalistic and
rational.
Marcelo Evelin
Marcelo Evelin, born in 1962 in Teresina,
in the state Piauí, is a dancer, choreographer, director, scientist
and teacher of improvisation and composition. He left Brasil in 1968 and
studied dance and choreography in Paris under Philippe Decoufle, Josef Nadj
and Karine Saporta. Two years later, he continued his education at the School
for New Dance Development (SNDO) in Amsterdam. He remained in the Netherlands
and joined Arthur Rosenfeld’s dance theatre ensemble Meekers. After
an assistance with Pina Bausch, he began his work as a choreographer and
founded the company Demolition Inc. in the Netherlands, with the help of
state funding. Up to now, he has written, directed and choreographed 25 pieces.
He is currently active as a stage author and professor for improvisation
and composition in the departments for mime and modern dance at the art academy
of Amsterdam.
His most recent works are: Loaded (for the Hetveem Theater Amsterdam), The
wakening (dance video, in collaboration with Sergio Gridelli), Luoghi de
Solitudene (a piece of Alex Guerra, Rome) and Self-Service (for the dance
platform Ateliê de Coreógrafos in Salvador-Bahia), 2005. Bull
Dancing, a Dutch-Brazilian collaboration, 2006. Since 2006, he has been the
artistic director of the Teatro João Paulo II in Teresina-Piauí.
There, he founded the two projects Centro and Núcleo de Criação
do Dirceu, which are intended to provide a platform for research and development
of contemporary scenic art.