Eu não sou só su em mim, by Alejandro Ahmed for Grupo Cena 11. Photo © Karin Serafin

review, article

Brazil in Holland, 2024

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Eu não sou só su em mim, by Alejandro Ahmed for Grupo Cena 11. Photo © Karin Serafin
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Brazilian performance coursed through the Holland Festival this year, a river of many currents…

This year marks the 77th anniversary of Holland Festival, impressive for an event that continues to morph and adapt alongside the undulating cultural landscape. Since 2019, associate artists have been invited to work in close collaboration with festival director Emily Ansenk to develop a ‘universe’ of underlying themes into which the audience can enter and experience something completely new. The 2024 edition was curated alongside Brazilian theatre and filmmaker Christiane Jahachty, thus Brazil became one of the central thematic strands of a programme that spliced together dance, theatre, music, nightlife and digital art. There was a hell of a lot to get through if you wanted to taste it all, but my own multi-day round-up would be defined by this Brazilian undercurrent.

To ask what is Brazilian identity is far too simplistic a question for Tahiba Melina Chaves, Brazilian born and Netherlands based culture professional. Instead, at her introduction to Eu não sou só eu em mim (more on this awesome performance to come) by long-standing Brazilian company Grupo Cena 11, she provoked us to consider what the concept of identity actually means in a country that houses a plethora of histories, cultures and peoples, and how live performance can be a conduit to understanding but not fixing our perception of Brazilian people. How do fragments of personal stories, glimpses of traditions, and dreams for the future unite on stage? With her knowledge and experience of the Brazilian dance scene, Chaves crafted a brilliant talk that illuminated the status of Brazil in the global history of dance.

‘Where will we see Brazilian dance?’ asked someone in the audience.

‘Watch out for moments when the performers move together,’ she replied. ‘Just watch.’

Three solos, two talks and one company performance later, I’m filled with sheer delight to be no closer to reaching any conclusive definition of Brazilian dance, but boy did I watch…

Eu não sou só eu em mim

Alejandro Ahmed for Grupo Cena 11

Nothing about Eu não sou só eu em mim (I am not just me in me) – Alejandro Ahmed’s newest project with Brazilian dance company Grupo Cena 11 – is intended to lull the audience into a sense of comfort. The grating sound of a record player stylus tracing the grooves of a spinning stone plays live as we enter. The soundscape is succeeded by an uncompromising, thumping beat that falls in and out of sync with my own anticipant heartbeat. Seven dancers slowly flood the stage, triple stepping in unending unison – forward, back, together, forward, back, together, forward, back – moving in lines and formations that seem mathematically precise. They glance robotically at each other then at us; they screech at unearthly volumes, and about halfway through they seem to malfunction, dropping like unfeeling ragdolls to the floor with stupendous acrobatics – to sharp intakes of breath from the crowd. (I heard that one audience member on the previous night even let out their own scream!)

On paper, these elements might sound like a rather unpleasant experience, yet throughout this performance my excitement never wavers. The pace and intensity pulsating from the stage is addictive. I’m so wrapped up in the relentless action and stamina that I almost miss when each performer spills out of unison and transforms the omnipresent triple-step into snippets of movement from other styles. I spot samba, capoeira, jongo and varying folk dances, and there are certainly others that escape my recognition. The performers’ agility in each genre that flavours the stage is so impressive that the concept of mastering one’s craft takes on an entirely new meaning.


Eu não sou só eu em mim, by Alejandro Ahmed for Grupo Cena 11

Grupo Cena 11 have a penchant for the punk, using performance to broach sociopolitical discourse in outrageous ways. They are also known for understanding dance as a vital tool for researching the complex relationships between flesh bodies and technology. Eu não sou só eu em mim is a prime example of these two defining characteristics. Large screens display uncanny AI-generated caricatures of each dancer or livestream videos taken on stage. At some point, two performers speak back and forth over microphones, but this conversation is fragmented. Sentences glitch and bleed over one another, products of an AI-generated script. Cena 11 have called this project ‘an anarcho-choreographic counterpoint to the concept of “Brazilian People”’ – the fusion of dance styles, the rupture of language and the submission to AI and algorithms complexifies the idea of identity, showing it to be slippery.

After spending one hour in Groupo Cena 11’s world of data bombardment I’m standing and clapping fervently, feeling like another element of the choreography; another feature of their algorithm. Am I me, or a combination of behavioural technologies and automated reactions? Perhaps I’ll never have an answer, but who knew bewilderment could feel so good.


Clayton Nascimento, Macacos. Photo © Julieta Bacchin
Clayton Nascimento, Macacos. Photo © Julieta Bacchin

Macacos

Clayton Nascimento

Clayton Nascimento is soloist and ensemble; narrator and character; he is past, present and, most importantly, political activist in his monologue Macacos. First performed over ten years ago, this highly physical play illustrates an enduring history of racism in Nascimento’s Brazil, and beyond, weaving together personal experiences, historical facts and reports of racially motivated atrocities into a speculative rewriting of history. The final tapestry, an artful combination of spoken word and precisely choreographed mime, is imbued with such affective emotion that I feel along with each beat of Nascimento’s voice.

There’s not an inch of stage that goes untouched as he paces, twirls, and theatrically gestures under a spotlight, delivering a constant stream of Portuguese. The sheer energy forces me to remind myself that I am watching a single person, yet Nascimento seamlessly becomes many, investigating the stage as a site of transformation. In a moment of camp exuberance he is Bessie Smith, serenading her audience; a gameshow host of a True or False quiz; he even transforms into Brazil, tracing red lipstick borders onto his own bare chest. All this versatile transformation acts as a precursor to his embodied retelling of the murder of nine-year-old Eduardo de Jesus by a police officer back in 2015, an unsettlingly familiar story.

Nascimento has an immense performative capacity. His gaze eats up the entire auditorium, and yet I still feel like he is always looking at me, requesting my attention. Macacos is a defiant exploration of what performance can be: an urgent conversation between performer and audience. After the applause, he brings Eduardo’s mother, Terezinha Maria de Jesus on stage, announcing that the archived case of her son’s murder has reopened, in part thanks to awareness raised by this performance. This ending reminds us to reflect – no, more than that, to participate actively in a practice of becoming co-authors in the rethinking of past and present, towards a more just future.

The Divine Cypher

Ana Pi

For the entire second half of her performance, Ana Pi is suspended in a cloud of shimmering powder that fills the auditorium (later revealed to be powdered sugar – who’d have thought?), transporting us to a dreamlike dimension. A soundscape of gentle whooshes and clangs plays on loop, but it is muffled as if we hear it through a viscous substance, and strips of white fabric suspended over a large circle on the ground create the impression of an other-worldly altar. It is in this hazy and fanciful universe that The Divine Cypher exists – a fabulative solo exploring the possible intersections between urban dance, Haitian rituals and experimental film.


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Ana Pi, The Divine Cypher. Photo © Daniel Nicoalevsky Maria
Ana Pi, The Divine Cypher. Photo © Daniel Nicoalevsky Maria

Pi’s choreography is equally ethereal. Balancing a large container of liquid on her head (this feat alone worthy of praise) she bobs back and forth, her arms rippling as if she were an extension of her watery headdress. From this liquid state she switches, popping her body like a human glitch or shifting into more rhythmic and bouncing steps plucked from ritualistic dances of the African diaspora. Pi cites Yanvalou, the sacred dance of Haitian Vodou, to be the main choreographic language through which she speaks; a dialect that consists of a back-and-forth motion of the body that feels similar to many traditional dances from Pi’s home country of Brazil. Through all of this, her gaze is cast downwards, giving this performance an internalised feel. Amongst all the hypnotic bobbing, and entangled in the many objects on stage, I do find myself getting lost, craving a moment of guidance from Pi in this spiritual venture.

The Divine Cypher is a work of Afrofuturism that unites Pi’s present with two of her predecessors: experimental filmmaker Maya Deren and influential dance practitioner Katherine Dunham, both of whom haunt the stage through projections and embodied movement. Pi wraps up her performance by addressing the audience directly, asking us to remain in her dreamscape; to sit with the fogginess just a while longer. I wonder what benefits this dreamy sugar cloud can offer me when thinking about themes of identity, migration and inequality. Blurring our perception of what we’ve been told are facts and allowing ourselves to slip fancifully into the past might just reveal some of the wildest truths…


Flávia Pinheiro, The Unborn. Photo © Thomas Lenden
Flávia Pinheiro, The Unborn. Photo © Thomas Lenden

The Unborn

Flávia Pinheiro

In the small studio theatre of Frascati the audience have been arranged as a kind of sandwich to the stage, two halves facing inwards with a black strip of dance floor as the filling. Staring across at the varied crowd, I am suddenly quite self-conscious that they are staring back at me. However, soon enough I realise this won’t be an issue as Flávia Pinheiro’s The Unborn spends most of its 45 minutes in complete blackout.

What do I watch then? Pinheiro’s highly shadowed performance is constructed as a series of aesthetically seductive vignettes. She sometimes snakes across the room in a repeating fishlike motion, adorned in a bodysuit of diamantes. She crawls on the spot, then sheds her sparkling skin to reveal her dextrous shoulders undulating impressively. Besides this, I sit in the dark and begin to imagine what is before me. Evoking the power of imagination seems to underpin Pinheiro’s research. Using a method of speculative fabulation, The Unborn imagines how spirits of unborn children, as well as other invisible presences, from bacteria to asylum seekers, might manifest in the visible world. She is not religious, but Pinheiro remains curious by the what if? of spirituality, especially given that part of her identity is rooted in ritual practices that made their way from west Africa to Brazil, her home before moving to Amsterdam to study.

Enduring long periods of darkness is not exactly what you prepare for when you go to watch a performance. Pinheiro pushes the boundary of audience experience and challenges how western theatregoers actually watch; how we see. I am rattled in an entirely new and wonderful way by the sonic atmosphere of the work – could this be because in these returning moments of complete blackout, sound is the only constant? Whatever the reason, sound designer Leandro Olivan’s rumbling bass and looped chants send literal vibrations through my body, and thrust me convincingly into Flavia’s invisible and microscopic planet in which, I imagine, every pin drop is a momentous boom. I also notice how enticed I am by the textures on stage; I want to stroke the giant feather boa that Pinheiro painstakingly pulls across the stage like a colossal umbilical cord; I want to breathe in and taste the smoke wall that cuts through the space – an effect of a sharp shaft of light in the smoky auditorium. Each element is so sensorially rich and steeped in the luxury of time that my whole body is required to participate.

The performance seems to exist in a slower temporal plane right up until the very last second, when in one sharp motion Pinheiro grasps the floor and tears it open, revealing a shocking light – and dives in.

This action seems a fitting note on which to end my Holland Festival experience. Disrupting and deconstructing (sometimes literally) the platforms upon which we investigate culture and identities is prominent recurring theme within each of the works I watched. Amongst all the necessary re-complicating and re-investigating of identity, I end this reflection knowing one thing for certain: Brazilian performers can certainly tear up the dance floor. ●


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Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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