Collage: © Icaro Gaya / Photographs © Paula Kossatz
Let it Burn
by Marcela Levi & Lucía Russo in collaboration with Tamires Costa
In Let it Burn, Marcela Levi, Lucía Russo and Tamires Costa confront the audience with historical and current stereotypes of black dancers' bodies. By invoking in turn burlesque standards, stand up, show off and even music hall, dancer Tamires Costa shatters and subverts these codes by excessively embodying them: bulging eyes, frenetic dances, smiles deformed to the point of rictus and prominent white teeth reminiscent, among other things, of the practices of blackface in the United States and the performances of Josephine Baker. The references to Nina Simone's hypnotic and imperious body movements or Michael Jackson's virtuosity and perfectly judged technical skill also weave a narrative arc through black history. Before the audience, the stage turns into an arena in which Tamires Costa makes herself both the guardian and agent of the claim about the body's explosive power in response to the domestication of African descent people in Brazil who are told not to be too visible in public.
CREDITS
Concept and direction
Marcela Levi & Lucía Russo
Performance and co-creation
Tamires Costa
Collaboration (creation process)
Ícaro dos Passos Gaya
Trainees
Taís Almeida and Anne Naukkarinen
Costumes
Levi & Russo
Light design
Tabatta Martins and Catalina Fernández
Sound design
All the team
Photography
Paula Kossatz and all the team
Video documentation
Renato Mangolin
Luiz Guilherme Guerreiro
Production
Improvável Produções
Distribution and co-production
Something Great
Support
Centro Coreográfico da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro, Consulate of Argentina in Rio de Janeiro, Espaço Cultural Sítio Canto da Sabiá and Projeto Entre.