Monday, June 30, 2008

"Dance dance dance"

I’m currently in Rio Branco in northern Brazil for the city quadrilha competition. Long story.

The Young Vic are putting on two plays later this year with Brazilian themes. The first of these, ‘Festa’, is in August and is founded in quadrilha. The second, ‘Amazonia’, is the Christmas show and will be loosely based on the life of Chico Mendes, the ecological activist assassinated in Xapuri 20 years ago this December.

And me? What exactly am I doing here? I’m not sure, really. I believe I’m supposed to ‘react’. But, so far I haven’t got a reaction. Or I’ve got too many. Or something.

The quadrilha is plain extraordinary. Eighteen teams from local communities compete in the competition. The action takes place on two five-a-side football pitches with temporary stands on either side. There’s a crowd of thousands.

Each team is made up of 12 couples dressed in rainbow peasant costume plus a variety of archetypal characters including ‘bride’, ‘groom’, ‘padre’ and more. The performance starts with a traditional pantomime on the theme of a wedding. It’s pretty broad stuff and the actors bellow their lines wearing mics like Bobby Brown in the ‘My Prerogative’ video. I can’t grasp a word they say, but it seems like no-one else can either.

After the nuptials, a master of ceremonies strides out and the band strikes up. The MC exhorts the dancers to their feet and they kick off with a kind of retro version of the running man and … they’re off! For the next 20 minutes, they square dance on fast forward, like an LP on 45, like their lives depend on it. It’s intricately choreographed madness. It’s colourful and brilliant, posessed and thoroughly bewildering. It’s like watching Morris dancers in Wembley Arena dance to techno on crack.

By the end, they’re visibly spent. A lot of the participants are very poor and, though they’ve rehearsed all year for their big night, they haven’t been able to eat properly. Some of them collapse and the medics are kept busy.

Apparently it’s a lot saner than it used to be. Apparently, the competition used to descend into violence. Once, there was a shooting.

Not any more. Tonight, my overwhelming sense is of a joy that is palpable and precious. Still, a bit crackers for anyone Putney raised. Joy and pain may be sunshine and rain, but rapture is heatstroke.

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