While the Rio Carnival cannot be transported to Edinburgh, a taste of Brazilian music, art, and culture is vivaciously captured through the scintillating choreography, vibrant music and exhilarating dance of Grupo Corpo.
Founded in 1975 by Rodrigo Pederneiras, the Brazilian dance company (‘Body Group’) continues to follow the aim to express ‘all facets of Brazil: past and future, erudite and popular, foreign influence and local colour, come to being as art. Brazilian art. World art.‘
At the Edinburgh International Festival, they are presenting the UK premiere of two dynamic dances, Gil Refazendo and Gira, celebrating the joy of spiritual, musical and cultural renewal. Gil Refazendo (which means re-making), was choreographed in 2022, as a timely homage to the legendary Brazilian musician and political activist Gilberto Gil, to mark his 80th birthday. His iconic experimental style fusing samba, reggae, rock and bossa nova creates an effervescent score to reflect themes of renaissance and rebirth after the Covid pandemic.
Dressed in loose, white shirts, shorts and trousers, the dancers glide seamlessly between solos, duets and ensemble sequences, in perfect synchronisation to the jazzy rhythm and electronic beat. The choreography blends Brazilian folk dance and classic ballet steps featuring arched spines, high kicks, hand punches, swaying hips, flexed feet with energetic pace and graceful style. To the haunting sound of panpipes, the fluid, flowing pattern of movement is like a wash of waves, with the vision of a waterfall on a backdrop screen.
With a shift of tempo, a quietly reflective melodic tune accompanies a gentle pas de deux, as a couple clinch in a close embrace. The video screen now shows a close-up photograph of a leaf, then the slow, slow blossoming of a flower, its delicate stamens, unfurling petals, then a painterly view of a field of yellow sunflowers. The dancers gather in a tight circle, in the image of a flower as a symbol of hope – the birth of Spring.
The title Gira comes from the Portuguese word ‘Girar’, meaning to spin. Inspired by the ceremonial rites of the Brazilian religion Umbanda, based on West-African practices, Catholicism and indigenous beliefs, the choreography imaginatively illustrates the ritualistic spinning performed by mediums to bring them closer to spiritual connection. The Sao Paulo jazz band Meta Meta has composed a dynamic mashup of punk, jazz, samba, Afrobeat and candomblé into an electrifying soundscape.
Around the stage is a row of candle-like lamps and in shadowy dim light, one by one, the dancers, both male and female, appear bare-chested, androgynously dressed in white, floaty skirts. With a strident percussive beat, they vigorously spin, swirl, twirl with a sense of emotional release in this tribal ritual dance. Intensely sensual, it seems at times their eyes are closed, focused in thought as if in a meditative, hypnotic trance.
As one single, synchronised group of twenty individual bodies, Grupo Corpo creates an exuberant, mesmerising fusion of movement, the pure aesthetic of dance with fiery Brazilian spirit and balletic grace and harmony.
With thanks to Vivien Devlin for this review.
