Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 89

Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 89, Dies; Lifted Brazilian Film
by Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times, April 27, 2018

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Hector Babenco, 70

Hector Babenco, Director of ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman,’ Dies at 70
by Katie Rogers, The New York Times, July 14, 2016

Naná Vasconcelos, 71

Naná Vasconcelos, Daring Brazilian Percussionist, Dies at 71
by William Grimes, The New York Times, March 11, 2016

Swallowing her whole: Volmir Cordeiro at Danspace Project

Volmir Cordeiro in Inês
(photo: Cristiano Prim)

One day, I met a woman named Inês. I wasn’t satisfied with just looking at her – I wanted to get closer. I immediately put aside my role as an observer and began to live with this “being of flesh.” It wasn’t enough to capture her; I had to swallow her whole.  -- Volmir Cordeiro

The figure you see in the photo above is Inês.

Or perhaps I should say it is Brazil-born dancer Volmir Cordeiro encasing the being of Inês in his rangy, barelegged body in a study named, Inês, presented by and at Danspace Project with Performa.

That's already a lot surrounding a woman who is not there, and this does not even take into account the audience also surrounding a woman who is not there.

Inêssssssss.  The cry of her name issues from Cordeiro's lips like an invocation of an orixá. Or a viper's hiss. Or a spray of rum from the mouth of a macumba priestess. Or all of these things at once.

Inês lives. Yes, an actual person, a sexagenarian and mom. By word of Cordeiro (and a useful post-show Q&A with Miguel Gutierrez and translator Patricia Hoffbauer), we know two other things: 1) She wants to get on a reality TV show. 2) She has had "a radical amount of plastic surgery," as noted by Gutierrez, to make herself a better candidate for elusive and likely ephemeral celebrity.

We must imagine what she looks like. What Cordeiro looks like borders on the wolfish. And when he strides right up to the edge of the audience's front row, right up to the eyeballs there, he can intimidate. Especially since he holds that place of dominance for a long time. Even when swiveling his limbs, or moving sideways along the row or venturing inside an aisle, he's a force that seems to want to pin you in your seat. You don't know what, in the very next second, could burst from him. And you don't want to know.

In your own head, you're walking on eggshells.

Is that Inês?

If so, she seems unbalanced enough to achieve the reality TV stardom she desires.

He/she is reckless with his/her body--especially when Cordeiro tapes his eyelids shut--in ways that make empathic/empathetic people like me cringe.

Is that Inês?

A useful tidbit from Danspace Project's material on Cordeiro (now based in Paris):

Volmir Cordeiro...is currently working on a PhD thesis on figures of marginality in contemporary dance at Paris VIII University. His studies and time spent in the favelas of Rio with Lia Rodrigues’ company reflect a desire to bring to life those who are “condemned to weaken, disappear, derail.” In previous works Cordeiro has explored the physicality of marginal and underprivileged figures.

Inês fascinates her observers, even as she scares them. How strange that her dream is such a flimsy thing, far flimsier than she herself must be.

Final performance of Inês: tonight at 9pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street (at Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

New film documents peril for Brazilian street artists

A Brazilian Street Art Community Wracked by Tragedy
by Laura C. Mallonee, Hyperallergic, January 1, 2015

Brazil's passinho dancers in US debut at LC Out of Doors

A Batalha do Passinho dancers
Below: Batalha host Zuzuka Poderosa
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

When New York's summer weather cooperates, as it certainly did last evening, Lincoln Center Out of Doors can be a great way to soak up and savor the positive energy of arts from nearly everywhere in our world. Last night's show brought an organized group of performers of passinho, the Rio de Janeiro party dance, in their US debut together with Rennie Harris Puremovement, the celebrated Philly troupe that revolutionized a sophisticated blending of hip-hop moves with more conventional dance theater techniques and aesthetics.

Three luminaries of New York's urban and contemporary dance scene
served as the passinho battle's judges.
Left to right: Rokafella, Akim Funk Buddha and Doug Elkins
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

A Batalha do Passinho dancers (c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa
The showcase was created in 2011 by co-artistic director Julio Ludemir
after this Rio favela dance trend went viral on YouTube.

Opening the two-hour show, the Brazilians burst on the stage with a rawness and sense of adventure and fun that would be hard to top. Rapidfire twisting of their feet made their bent legs look like massive, lethal grinders. The daunting contortions of flexing and bone breaking, the smooth illusions of moonwalking, b-boying acrobatics, Cossack folkdance and even voguing all flow through passinho, offered in a spirit of good-natured competitiveness. The batalha (battle) format of the Brazilian presentation, facilitated by the merry host, Zuzuka Poderosa, gave the Lincoln Center audience an active investment in the proceedings as we watched closely to make distinctions between the competitors' styles and specialties.

Marcelly Miss Passista,
champion of the Lincoln Center batalha
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

The Brazilian dancers trained our eyes for a kind of reckless derring-do that seem combed out of the silky, glamorously sexy Puremovement with Harris's oddly safe, placid approach to arranging dancers across a stage--line them up, slide the frontal lines side to side. It's funny to come away feeling that I would have preferred to see Puremovement "where they belong now"--in formal, and well-managed, indoor staging. Put a frame around them.

The interesting encounter and dialogue of troupes that could have been did not pan out. Maybe next time both crews could be tossed together in a residency to experiment and cook up something surprising.

New York knows and loves Rennie Harris's endless seductions, the way his dancers' bodies bounce like rubber against air as if it were a hard surface; the way they float inside and around the edges of music's rhythms, each body addressing multiple, discrete segments of time in individual ways even when everyone's working the same moves. Puremovement demonstrates the basic silliness of trying to make dance where everyone looks exactly like everyone else, where visual homogeneity is privileged. Everything offered up is going to be a little different, according to who gives it, and that's a fine, instructive thing.

*****

There's much more to come from the Lincoln Center Out of Doors festival, running through through August 10--all programs absolutely free. Click here for a schedule of events including tomorrow's 1pm Family Day dance class with dancers from A Batalha do Passinho!

Lincoln Center Out of Doors
Damrosch Park Bandshell, Lincoln Center
West 62nd Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Brazilian feminist makes music her own way

Joyce Does It Her Way
by Joe Nocera, The New York Times, February 17, 2014

Regina Nejman's new "story" emerges at Dixon Place

There's rippling vigor in Regina Nejman & Company in Nejman's new work, "...and this is the story thus far". The dancers--including Alicia Dellimore, Kristin Licata, Lindsey Mandolini, Julie Miller, Oscar Santana and the choreographer--enjoy themselves and their Dixon Place environs so thoroughly that one can imagine them hanging out long after the audience has left for the cold, Lower East Side streets.

One can imagine them continuing to loll on the balcony, dangling and fluttering their legs through the railings; continuing to melt, slip and swoosh against the theater's back wall; continuing to slither up and down the stairs between sections of audience seating. In our absence, they could give one another, instead of us, double air-kisses, shimmy to the musical recordings from the dancemaker's native Brazil, whirl on the floor on their sides as if dropping capoeira moves in a different dimension, and scatter about like football players. (That's soccer, of course, to all you US folks.) Nejman's film might go on running, too, so that she and her friends could convince themselves that they really are rolling along a rough, bush-lined road to a beach. Once there, they could find themselves helplessly mesmerized by the ocean's glow.

As a title, "...and this is the story thus far" certainly suggests an unfinished narrative. Much of this episodic, meandering piece seems tentative as well as dreamy in the way of early, easygoing dreams floating just below the surface of consciousness. Dreams from which you quickly awaken only to dip into another. There appears to not be a lot going on except, perhaps, the desire to touch something of home when far away from home.

Most of the tension--and I mean that in a good way--comes through sometimes fiery accompaniment by rock guitarist Britt Reagan. Nejman wisely folds Reagan, and his original music, into the action in interesting, physical ways, and there's a particularly loud, cacophonous scene in which dancers shout over one another--What's happening?, It doesn't make any sense! and the like--while Reagan's music growls back.

At times, you might want to ask the same questions of "...and this is the story thus far" but politely, because it doesn't matter that much. You're warm and having a pleasant time.

"...and this is the story thus far" will have one more performance--tonight at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey), Manhattan
(directions)

Brazilian protests give new charge to New York City music fest

Soundtrack to a Party, and Unrest in Brazil
At Brasil Summerfest, More Pointedly Political Lyrics
by Larry Rohter, The New York Times, July 21, 2013

A Brazilian parade of music

Marching to an African Beat
by Jon Pareles, The New York Times, February 12, 2013

Latin American sounds at Lincoln Center Out of Doors

Sergio Dias (Photo: Darial Sneed)

Guest blogger Darial Sneed offers her photographs and reflections on a great show at Lincoln Center's Damrosch Park Bandshell:

After Thursday’s rain cancellation, Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival returned Friday with a South-of-the-Border-themed program.

Brazilian guitarist and composer Sergio Dias, in traditional attire, opened with a rousing guitar and vocal rendition of Brazilian songs. Dias is best known as a founding member of popular rock band Os Mutantes. The crowd enjoyed the rare treat of Dias’ first solo performance since 2006.

Wil-Dog El Gavachillo (photo: Darial Sneed)

Wil-Dog El Gavachillo with Banda Viento de Oro pulsated with punk rock beat and rhythms. The charismatic bassist Wil-Dog Abers--of Los Angeles-based Latin band Ozomatli--donned a hat and with pumping fists assumed his alter ego “El Gavachillo”. He was backed by the Mexican-inspired brass band, Banda Viento de Oro, making its first New York appearance.

Colombia's Los Irreales de Ondatrópica (photo: Darial Sneed)

Nidia Góngora of Los Irreales de Ondatrópica (photo: Darial Sneed)

Eagerly anticipated was the new Colombian group Los Irreales de Ondatrópica, fresh from its debut at the London Olympics. The 12-member group, which just completed a new CD at the fabled Discos Fuentes studios, includes Colombia music legends and rising stars. Performing traditional Cumbia updated with electronics and hip-hop drums, the band’s energetic, undulating pulse brought many in the audience to their feet, swaying and dancing enthusiastically. Vocalist Nidia Góngora was captivating as she playfully flirted with male band members and the audience.

It was a foot-stomping evening of Latin-based music under clear, crisp skies.

--Darial Sneed

Arts funding in booming Brazil

Brazil’s Leading Arts Financing Group Shares the Wealth
by Larry Rohter, The New York Times, March 27, 2012

Go on singing, more, more: Jobim remembered

So I come back to my first note
As I must come back to you...

--"Samba de Uma Nota Só"/"One Note Samba" by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Newton Mendonça 

Music according to Tom Jobim (aka, The Music according to Antonio Carlos Jobim), a new film by Nelson Pereira dos Santos, takes me back not only to the heyday of bossa nova but to my own days of mad love for the sounds of Brazil and Brazil-infused jazz. Jobim's lilting, romantic music flashed through my nerves and sent my young imagination reeling. Now dos Santos brings all of that back with this unusual documentary tribute, soon to open at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's New York Film Festival 2011.

Rejecting the expected voice-over and talking-heads approach, Dos Santos allows music--plus an extraordinary collage of vintage, and sometimes quite worn, film and video performance clips--to tell the story of Jobim's career in Brazil and abroad and the huge influence his songs had on performers around the globe. If you're old enough, you probably remember Jobim for "Garota de Ipanema" ("The Girl from Ipanema")--a worldwide 1960s hit that gets satiric treatment here through a surprising series of perfomance clips from the cute to the beyond-belief ridiculous. But there was so much more covert power to the delicious, delicate magnetism of Jobim's range of songs. You can feel that sensual, if wistful, pull in "Dindi," "Insensatez" ("How Insensitive"), "Desafinado" ("Off key"), "Wave," "Corcovado" ("Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars") and the haunting "A felicidade" ("Happiness"), the theme from Black Orpheus. Written solo or with lyricists like Newton Mendonça and Vinicius de Moraes, these lovely standards are songs to curl up inside.

Nearly seventeen years after Jobim's passing, it's both cheerful and poignant to watch him perform his music in this film. The composer's warmth and joy animate his every appearance even as we watch time thicken and age him. Even in one of his late performances, which looks rather labored, you can sense his commitment to the music and to his audience.

Dos Santos and co-director Dora Jobim, Jobim's granddaughter, have compiled footage recording sensational interpretations of Jobim songs by Gal Costa, Silvia Telles, Judy Garland, Sammy Davis, Jr., Diana Krall (who, sexy enough in English, wows the Brazilians by singing in Portuguese), Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Errol Garner, Jane Monheit, Stacey Kent and Milton Nascimento among many others. If I could design a heaven, Sarah Vaughn would be singing "Wave," an astonishingly sensitive Frank Sinatra would be dueting with Jobim on "Girl from Ipanema," and Ella Fitzgerald would smash her bottle of champagne on the good ship "Desafinado."

To borrow and flip some lyrics from "How Insensitive," let me be clear: This love affair ain't over.

Music according to Tom Jobim

by Nelson Pereira dos Santos
Brazil, 2011 (Regina Films)
Portuguese with English subtitles
88 minutes

October 2 at 6pm and 8:30pm (tickets)

A presentation of the New York Film Festival
Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center
Broadway and 65th Street, Manhattan

Subway: #1 local train to 66th Street/Lincoln Center Station
Bus: The M5, M7, M10, M11, M66 and M104 bus lines all stop within one block of Lincoln Center.

Who's hot? Brazil's Tom Zé!

Tom Zé, a Brazilian Force of One, at Alice Tully Hall
by Jon Pareles, The New York Times, July 14, 2011

Brazil's "Chico Xavier"

Chico Xavier
a film by Daniel Filho
(Brazil, 2010; 125 min.)

from Chico Xavier
Photo courtesy of Lereby Produções

Daniel Filho's film--making its U.S. premiere this week at the Museum of Modern Art's Premiere Brazil! festival--traces the life and work of Spiritist medium Chico Xavier (1910-2002). From childhood, Xavier ("Chico" is the diminutive for Francisco) just knew things about people, and his touch could center and calm them. The youngster's abilities unnerved his abusive godmother and ran counter to the teachings of the Catholic Church. But Chico drew widespread support as he grew into a gentle, unassuming young man who dedicated his life to serving the needs of the people, refusing to profit from what he says he had been given by the spirit world. Bringing individual messages and numerous books by way of automatic writing, he toiled--through personal suffering and sacrifice, through family dissension and turmoil--to offer comfort to others. Xavier became an important figure in Brazilian culture where Spiritism--introduced by the writings of the Frenchman Allan Kardec--accounts for a wide swath of spiritual practice, even among people who are, ostensibly, Roman Catholic.

How will non-Brazilian film-goers--especially skeptics or those with little interest in metaphysical practices--take to Filho's moody and languid narrative? The film has a muted, even dark, palette and can often be lulling over its two hours. But it benefits greatly from the presence of sweet-faced Ângelo Antônio who plays Xavier in his young adulthood (1931-1959). Antônio first appears on screen, and we grab him like an anchor. Few things can throw this guy--the character or the actor playing him--off course.

Visit the Chico Xavier movie site.

MoMA screening schedule:

Friday, July 15 (5pm)
Thursday, July 21 (4:30pm)
Friday, July 22 (4pm)

For a complete program information and schedule of Premiere Brazil! screenings (July 14-27), click here.

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters
The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues), Manhattan
(directions)

Losses for Rio samba schools in fire

Fire in Rio Dims Carnaval Performers’ Hopes

by Alexei Barrionuevo, The New York Times, February 7, 2011

Go into the light!

TAGR.TV Interviews Ernesto Klar

July 30, 2010


ERNESTO KLAR: RELATIONAL LIGHTS

December 15-21

3LD Art and Technology Center

80 Greenwich Street (near Rector Street), Manhattan

Luzes relacionais (Relational Lights) is an interactive audio-visual installation that explores our relationship with the expressional-organic character of space. The installation uses light, sound, haze, and a custom-software system to create a morphing, three-dimensional light-space in which spectators actively participate, manipulating it with their presence and movements. The work functions as a living organism with or without the presence and interactions of spectators. When viewers step outside the projected light-space, the system begins its own dialogue with space by means of extruding and morphing sequences of geometric light forms. And when viewers penetrate and interact with the projected light-space, a collective and participatory expression of space unfolds. Luzes relacionais amplifies the three-dimensional fabric of space by making it visible, audible, and tangible to participants. The resulting aesthetic experience encourages an unending relational process of shaping space among participants. Luzes relacionais is a hommáge to the work and aesthetic inquiry of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark.

Gallery Hours: 12PM to 8pm and by appointment

Opening Reception: Wednesday, December 15 (6-8pm)

Directions to 3LD

Nearest subway stations are 1/R/W to Rector Street; 4/5 to Wall Street; J/M/Z to Broad Street; A/C to Broadway-Nassau; E to World Trade Center

Capoeira in Bushwick

Moses (Bronx) and Sasha (Parafina) McCarter of Capoeira Concepts are offering a series of six introductory capoeira classes at Chez Bushwick! The classes are held every Monday at 7pm, now through 12/27.

$10/class and $45 for the workshop (6 classes)

Learn the fundamentals of capoeira including ginga (basic swinging step), esquivas (ducks) and kicks. We will then move on to floor movements, sequences and working in pairs. Basic acrobatics, handstands and bridges will also be introduced. As music is an integral part of capoeira, we will be learning songs in Portuguese and getting familiar with the instruments, including berimbau (single stringed instrument), atabaque (drum), pandeiro (tambourine) and agogo (cow-bells). 

Classes will begin with a warm up followed by stretching, strengthening and conditioning exercices specific to capoeira. Next we will familiarize you with movements and terminology through repetition sequences and partner work. Classes will culminate with a roda, which is the circle in which the experience of capoeira is shared. This is where we take all that we have learned and put it into practice along with instruments, singing and clapping. It is recommended to wear comfortable clothing, preferably white and be prepare to train barefoot.

For more information and directions to Chez Bushwick, click here or contact bronxcapoeira@gmail.com.

Chez Bushwick

304 Boerum Street, #23, Brooklyn
718-418-4405

info@chezbushwick.net

Sperber's "Naomi" @Brazil

Naomi is a handsome site-specific work that drills into its site on an almost cellular level. In 2005, choreographer Anna Sperber founded Brazil, the Bushwick studio in which this quintet plays out. Collaborating with lighting mage Joe Lavasseur, she brings out dramatic beauty in this humble loft space.

As the opening night audience squeezed into two tightly-spaced rows of folding chairs along one side of the studio, I suddenly had an unbidden, cheerful thought–that this is a place in which good things happen in this time of so many bad things. Where this thought came from–or why it arrived--I cannot guess. But Naomi is, in any case, a good thing.

Outside the room’s windows, a silken banner rustled in a strong breeze. Streetlights and lights from aircraft and nearby buildings added to an overall sense of embracing brightness and warmth. Sperber used this, opening the work with the studio’s lights out and keeping things that way for a long while, relying upon the external lights to silhouette her dancers--Julie Alexander, Natalie Green, Jennifer Lafferty, Tara Lorenzen and Rebecca Serrell Cyr--as they entered and circumnavigated the studio. Over 40 minutes, they defined a territory, patrolled it, energized it, complicated it, glamorized it, ritualized it, reflected it, haunted it.

Sperber continually brought the outside in–from the gorgeous wet glow of a neighboring building’s facade to the sudden flush of sound from an opened window. She drew our attention beyond the confines of the space, even having dancers gaze outside or extend themselves outside the windows. Add her seredipitous and marvelous collaboration with Bushwick to the credits for Levasseur, Nate Wooley (whose music helped animate Brazil) and FACADE/FASAD (whose costumes, at times, catch the light just so).

Seating is very limited and, according to Sperber's Web site as of this morning, tickets remain only for tonight’s 9:30pm show. Click here now for information and reservations.

Brazil

1182 Flushing Avenue

Bushwick, Brooklyn

Jefferson Street station on the L (complete directions; map)

Paulo Moura, 77

Paulo Moura, Force in Brazilian Music, Dies at 77

by Larry Rohter, The New York Times, July 18, 2010

paulomoura.com