Performance

Luiz de Abreu
& Calixto Neto

O Samba do Crioulo Doido

Luiz de Abreu, O Samba do Crioulo Doido © Marc Domage
Luiz de Abreu, O Samba do Crioulo Doido © Marc Domage

24 > 26.03.22

CN D Pantin

A response to the urgent need to address the question of decolonialisation, the legacy of slavery and the relationships of domination it induces, this solo, devised and danced by Luiz de Abreu before being passed on to Calixto Neto, deconstructs the representations of the black body in Brazilian culture by bringing about a shift from a body-object to a body-subject. Performing naked, the dancer, a black body on a dimly lit stage, exaggerates his gestures to ridicule the identity forcibly projected upon him and which assigns him to an imaginary caught between eroticism and exoticism. Luiz de Abreu’s writing parodies both carnival and classical ballet, displacing cultural signs to unmask the unconscious. The frontality of the performance and the stripped-back nature of the staging reflect the radical nature of the subject, while incisive and sly humour attenuates the violence of the critique. Through penile games, abdominal ripples and buttock tremors, the dancer’s playful and joyful physicality expresses a raw materiality that goes beyond the symbolic, that of a subordinate body drawing the means of its emancipation from within itself.

A graduate of the contemporary dance school Angel Vianna (Rio de Janeiro) and holder of a master’s from the university of Uberlândia, Luiz de Abreu is a choreographer-performer. Mainly turned towards the exploration of stereotypes connected to the black body, his work has been shown in France, Germany, Portugal, Croatia, Cuba, Spain and Brazil, where he lives and works. He has in particular taken part in the Sesc Dance Show in São Paulo and the Mercosur Biennale. His piece O Samba do Crioulo Doido is part of the video-dance collection of the Centre Pompidou.

Trained in theater at the Federal University of Pernambuco, then in dance at the Experimental Dance Group of Recife, the Brazilian dancer and choreographer Calixto Neto attended the Master Exerce program at the CCN of Montpellier. Between 2013 and 2015, he created the solo petites explosions. Calixto Neto collaborates with choreographers Mette Ingvartsen, Anne Collod and Bo-Kevin Jean, he also develops his own work in the shows oh!rage, Outrar (based on a proposal by Lia Rodrigues) and Feijoada and the films O Samba do Crioulo Doido: rule and compass and Pro Futuro Quilombo.