Marcela Levi & Lucía Russo | Improvável Produções
Brazil | Argentina
2016

a piece by Marcela Levi & Lucía Russo in collaboration with Ícaro Gaya

In 2016, choreographers Marcela Levi & Lucía Russo, allied with amazonian performer Ícaro Gaya, launched themselves the challenge of articulating on stage a "body-sweat guided by sound". The solo had its creation process - June to December 2016 - made possible with the support of the Centro Coreográfico da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro, Consulate of Argentina in Rio de Janeiro, Espaço Cultural Sítio Canto da Sabiá, Festival Dança Gamboa, as well as the Espaço Graner and the Sâlmon Festival, both in Barcelona. In December 2016, the solo was premiered at Sala Hiroshima, also in Barcelona, with the name "Boca de Ferro" (the name given to the sound speakers). Since then, it has been presented in São Paulo, at Sesc Belenzinho; in Zagreb, at Queer Zagreb Festival; in Faro, at DeVIR Encounters; in Vitoria Gasteiz, at Proklama n.10; in Buenos Aires, at Arqueologias del Futuro; in San Juan, at Encuentro Regional de Teatro del Nuevo Cuyo; in Campinas, at Bienal Sesc de Dança; in Vienna, at Tanzquartier; in Helsinki, at Side Step Festival; in Rio de Janeiro, at Sesc Copacabana, in São Paulo, at MITbr; in Amsterdam at Julidans festival and in Teresina at JUNTA.

i'll sample, i'll steal you away! my love was true, yours was pirate
(Gaby Amarantos)

Musically, the state of Pará is an Amazonian Caribbean formed thanks to the smuggling routes. In the fifties, the ships which brought perfumes and whisky also carried merengue, salsa and zouk vinyls. Sixty years later, the influence of Caribbean sounds led music from Pará to tecnobrega - a musical genre created by the appropriation and alteration of popular songs. The aparelhagens - furious sound structures which nowadays pack the technobrega parties - started out in handcarts called picapes in the 1950s and the sound speaker was nicknamed boca de ferro (iron mouth).

Our starting point is the word "Belém": a place of confusion, chaos, noise and mess.

A dance-rapsody infernal, irreverent, playful, provocative, indecent, furious, cunning and sensual. A dance emanated from a body full of others, of contradictions, ambiguities, good and evil, that is, a human body, of people. How about a mega-sounding solo, a dance-aparelhagem, a body-spaceship that takes off from identity and twerks and shakes furiously?

Concept and direction: Marcela Levi & Lucía Russo
Performance and co-creation: Ícaro dos Passos Gaya
Assistant: Tamires Costa
Light design: Isadora Giuntini, Catalina Fernández
Costumes: Levi & Russo
Sound design: all the team
Video: Tristán Pérez-Martín
Photography: Elisa Mendes, Gelson Catatau
Production: Improvável Produções
Co-production and distribution: Something Great (Berlin - DE)
Support: Centro Coreográfico da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro, Consulado de Argentina in Rio de Janeiro, Cultural Centre Sítio Canto da Sabiá, Gamboa Festival (Rio de Janeiro), Graner, Sâlmon Festival, Hiroshima Theatre (Barcelona)
Acknowledgements: Aleix Caussa, Amália Lima, Andrea Pimentel, César Augusto, Carles Nogueras, Cristina Alonso, Daniel Luhmann, DJ Waldo Squash, Elena Carmona, Gastón Core, Ginetta Levi Mortera, Isabel Penoni, Jackie Silva, Laura Erber, Luiza Leite, Marcia Rubin, Maria Acselrad, Mercedes Russo, Miwa Yanagizawa, Paula Delecave, Paula Mori, Sérgio Rezende, Tatiana Altberg, Veronica Russo, Vitor Nascimento