Synchronicity, Belief & Guaraná In The Depth Of Every Measure

¡Canastos! Last night, safety pins were certainly the best friend of many dancers, as Portland State University kicked off its second annual Brazilian Carnaval celebration in the Smith Center's 3rd floor ballroom. Well as the Tunisian dancers say, "A day I don't dance is a day I don't live", and if you're not dancing, you're just wasting your feet, so I went straight there to show off the luminous manifestation of my soul.



In one of my texts for my English 308U course "Dance In Literature", titled "Bodies In The Text: Dance As Theory, Literature As Dance", there is a wonderful contribution by Barbara Browning titled "Samba: The Body Articulate", where she says samba "may seem both fluid, jointless, and at the same time entirely disjointed." (39). As this happens, the dance "narrates a story of racial content, conflict and resistance, not just mimetically across a span of musical time, but synchronically in the depth of a single measure." (39)



There is indeed a great mystique to the origin of this dance, with a diverse imbuing of bloodlines from both African slaves and natives contributing much of its story told through didi no pé, or "speaking with the feet". As she also explains, "samba is as much a fragmentation of a holy black body as it is a healing of spiritual and political wounds." (53) Lymphatic motion is unconvincing and unpoetic itself, but when a dance is overly jointed, I feel that kind of dance is unsympathetic, it lacks emotion, it lacks what Browning thinks of as "belief and resistance" (54). But simply just envisioning the samba dancer recall these stories, and rhythmically stepping thunderously and speaking of the injustices like the storm goddess Iansa, while seeking rejuvenation as "shoulders shimmer like the surface of Yemanjá's (the goddess of the sea) waters." (49) is a story only the body can speak, wholeheartedly raw and unabridged.

I believe with every dance, there's poetry and a deep, unabashed sensuality. Often the greatest sensuality sprouts from "belief and resistance", and why I'm also deeply convinced that samba has become a dance recognized inter-culturally; in "speaking with the feet", you're not merely speaking a story, you're enacting the story, you are of the story! :)



So anyway, the doors opened at 7:00 last night there, and I went in and got myself a great seat in the third aisle from the stage to the left of the auditorium. Then I headed over to the back of the auditorium, where the local La Villa Restaurant was catering for the event, and got myself a piping hot Spinach Pie and a can of Guaraná Antarctica soda. I don't recall ever having a can of Guaraná befre, even when I enjoyed spending every little bit of allowance money I had at the Avanza supermarket at the Lakeside Center after my Saturday driving school sessions at Minnie Rates Driving School , where I'd get chocolate coconut candies, coconut sodas, Tampoco drinks, and once even brought home a half pound of spicy crawfish, which I ate for lunch that very afternoon shortly before becoming a vegetarian. Whooooooops-a-daisy, I'm digressing here, LOL, so anyway I really enjoyed that Guaraná; it tastes like guava juice with carbonated water. Definitely something in terms of exotica that blasts Coca-Cola Blak out of the water! :)



Right around 8:00, ¡pum!, the show began! Renata Secco of the Lions of Batucada led a samba march from the back of the auditorium to the stage, dressed up in verdant greens and gyrating with the Brazilian flag proudly on a pole. She was followed by a throng of dazzling female PSU World Dance students, all dressed up in green, gold and white with belly buttons proudly exposed, marching in single file down the central aisle, with their arms jointlessly and rhythmatically waving high over their heads and down to their hips in repetitive motion like tapioca in motion. Right behind them were several gentlemen in white Brazilian suits, interpreting their own samba dances, and several other dancers, including Beto Guimarães, a talented and nationally renowned teacher and performer of contemporary Brazilian dance, who was born in Olinda of northeastern Brazil, the heritage city of UNESCO, in the state of Pernambuco, who has taught brazilian dances including samba, samba de roda, pagode, coco de roda, samba regae, frevo and Maracatu. He certainly was the frolicsome star host of the evening, cavorting around in his black silk shirt with red tints and sparkling, prismatic confetti pants. He even teaches private lessons and dance workshops in the Bay Area at his official-website . What an entrance indeed! :) (does happy mole pagode) So they all thundered to the stage and upon it, against the throbbing of the repinique and the surdo, making an infectious galloping rhythm with the tamborins. These instruments drove much of the evening's dances, accompanied sometimes by the agogo, an iron and steel instrument that makes a sound by striking a stick against the instrument's two bells, producing high and low tones. Incredibly sexy, especially with the belief filling each gyration, each vibration.

The second dance featured seven women in long, white dresses with green and white head decorations, who often danced in an oval formation carrying wooden mirrors which they gazed deep into, with arms and trembling shoulders swinging like pendulums while staring into the mirrors against a lyrical chant that sounded like, "Mo-dee-la-ma, mo de lee mai oh, ya ba do da do may oh...".

Then, three youngens in colorful shirts and pants stole the show in the third dance sequence, with lil' arms swinging like tapioca propellers, performing an incredibly acrobatic dance sequence with leg split leaps, lots of hopping and spinning around with one foot off the ground at all times, feet extensions while squatting, gymnastics and then a repeat of the dance sequence holding colorful Carnival parasols.



Finally, the Lions of Batucada and the PSU Dance students performed a final dance, where the female dance students returned to the stage and performed a very sensual dance sequence with lots of jiggling, shaking that got me and the whole audience shook up. Midway through, I already found myself caught up in their sexy sequence of the shaking of the hips while swinging your arms up high with your fingers outstreched, then swinging down to your hips with your fingers outstretched in smooth rotation, and at another point I got excited and literally hot seeing this sequence where the dancers extended their right arm out like the outstreched wing of a bird, then the left arm, then boldly pressed their right hands on their right hips, then their left hands on their left hips, then side-stepped rightward making a horizontal rhythm-like motion of the hands outstretched leftward and then leaped with hands up in celebratory glee. Pure seduction! (blushes) That sequence alone makes me want to take samba classes so I can tempt my dream girl beyond the pleasure dome! (giggles) :)



Afterward, the Grupo Capoeira Regional do Brasil performed an exciting, free-wheeling, bravura of a show, with a group of students, most in their navy blue school shirts and white pants and some in white pants with hay skirts and decorative orange hats, performing their flexibility and elasticity to the Nth degree. ¡Huy! I swear they must have showed off the entire Capoeira encyclopedia within fifteen minutes; from handstand whirling to Folha Secas (kind of like an overhead kick in soccer, except you land on your feet again) to the devilish Au Malandro! All of the dance sequences had a feeling of circularity and unity, where often the dancers moved in a counter-clockwise motion, in one sequence with straw sombrero-like hats on, who would come together in a motion as though resembling the calyx of a flower, place their hats on the ground, widen the circle, then come together again, pick up their hats, continue in the counter-clockwise motion, then suddenly would move around in an oval motion with the dancers toward the audience moving backward kneeling in a motion as though they're pulling a rope. Each of the dance sequences also featured buoyant musical rhythms, with the berimbau, two tambourines, an agogo, and an atabaque (percussion drum), and while the music goes on, in their roda (or circle) where capoeira is played, the roada represents a microcosm which reflects the macrocosm of life and the world around us, where often a capoeira student's main opponent is ones self. Moreover, the music often has a call and response pattern that usually thanks God and one's teacher, among other things, which call and response are repeatedly chanted while the games are played. :)



Then, afterwards, Bom Demais of Seattle, Xevi Nova, and the Axé Didé Dance Company performed additional dances, performing a wide, diverse pallette of influences from Afro-Brazilian to Afro-Cuban, from Gaga to more modern styles, one with the commanding drumbeat Booboobooboo, dun dun dun!", another against a lyrical rhythm that sounded: "Ah la pwee I oh, ah la pwee I oh, ah la pwee I oh, bah dah gaya pwee I oh!" Hopefully I can find a translator soon, they truly were beautiful, sinuous cadences! :)



Finally, after announcing the two raffle winners of two free dinners to the Brazil Grill, famously known as "Portland's Only Churrascaria" (Churrasco is a centuries old Brazilian traditional cooking method, which has a unique way of roasting the meat on a special grill from Brazil, and conserving the natural flavor of each portion and leaving each cut full of its natural juice, with the Churrascaria the restaurant that serves this type of meat) where roaming gauchos will come and carve your meats at your tableside (gluton and tempeh for me, of course, since I'm a vegetarian now, ¡ay!), all the chairs close to the stage were removed so we could prepare to initiate our forms of interpretive dance with Beto Guimarães. Yep, how could I ever be a cluck when the opportunity to dance has arrived? So I took to the floor for about forty-five minutes, braising those endorphins and inhaling the Vitamin D of the nightlife limelight, performing my vagarious array of salamander samba, happy dance granola, frenzied gestures I make listening to Shakira's music and the Thin Mint Flit. (giggles)



Then by about 11:00, most of us took our feet speeches all the way home, and I got back to my house just in time before midnight to catch Mulberry Commons on Multnomah Public Television. Saturday evening is always my favorite time to tune in, where the most random material is always aired, from reruns of The vonHummer Hour to archived concert footage of The Folk You!, a guitar duo who would mix a whole bunch of popular songs together including "Ballroom Blitz" and "Mrs. Robertson" with mad, fervent guitar playing, and even wrote their own numbers including one about a moon pie. Oooohhhhhhhh...God Bless the outré, outlandish oversoul of Community Television! :)



Once I collect more mulah from BetZip poker, note-taking efforts for my English 366 American Fiction III class, and when I find some odd jobs this summer, I'm going to definitely take some dance classes around town, especially in samba, and next time I come mooching the halls of KBOO jovially, I'll graduate from my signature single lutz to the Macaco, and will get Kirk VanderVeer, Doug Guidi, John Delderfield and Co. to trill: ¡Cáspita! Ay, that could still be the Guaraná talking, but indeed, as D.H Lawrence said, "We ought to dance with rapture that we might be alive...and part of the living, incarnate cosmos." Let your imagination release your imprisoned possibilities...and let them dance like flittering fairies!



Oh.....and make sure you bring some safety pins too.....they often truly are a belly dancer's best friend! :)

XOXO,
Noah Eaton
(Mistletoe Angel)
(Emmanuel Endorphin)