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Published in the magazine Dana & Cia./ # 24Aug./Sept. 2002

Section - Brazilian Dance and Popular Culture

With so many kinds of timber in the bush, embrava is the colonel.

(Batuque players from Tiet)

Rosana Baptistella

In august, when we celebrate the Brazilian folklore, it is common to see schools, dance

studios and companies choreographing after folk dances like xaxado, bumba-meu-boi,

frevo, and so forth. They think they can only find a Brazilian flavour in the Northern

and North-eastern regions of the country. The Popular culture is everywhere: all it

requires from us is trained look and openness of mind, so that we can appreciate entire

communities celebrating special dates, honouring saints, and feasting.

Nowadays, themes concerned with Brazilian Dance and Popular Culture are a trend.

However, often enough they are stylised, and simply mimic the traditional expressions

depriving those traditional dances of their real features. Therefore, they dont undergo

any creation and transformation, what is essential to works of art of any field.

In the universe of Popular Culture, not only the dances and feasts inspire the dancers,

choreographers, artistic directors, and actors to create works of art. Working

movements, histories, and myths, can also do that, since theyre impregnated with thatdramatic something that illustrates actions and stories, and consequently link what is

real to what is just imagination, or daily cores to ritual practices. These things can be

translated into a movement language and transposed to scenes, or story-telling

choreographs. Yet avoid clichs.

Even the performers of these traditional expressions dont repeat the traditional

movements or the traditional songs, but rather create new ones. Their improvised

performances are never bound to any tradition. They create the new, express themselves,

and renew their tradition, while paying respect to their ancestors.

In this article we introduce Batuque de Tiet that is an example of this universe. In it the

richness of movements, rhythms, songs and improvisations calls our attention. It camefrom the slaves, and happens in towns of the So Paulo countryside, like Tiet,

Piracicaba, and Capivari.

Drums made of tree trunks, are beaten with sticks. The songs range from stories of the

times of captivity to contemporary themes, from tributes to their ancestors to modern

love stories, and so on. They can still be rhythmic songs and make rhyme games to be

played with the audience. All in all, they favour improvisation. The story goes that the

Negro slaves talked about their white masters in their chants by means of metaphors and

coded language. Through this way, they also told their fellow slaves to watch out any

danger, and passed their knowledge on to the group in such a way that their white

masters couldnt understand them. Up to these days they preserve the double meaning of

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the lyrics. The title of this article is an example of that, and means: Althugh therere so

many strong Negroes around, the weak white man is the boss here.

Danced by men and women in two rows one in front of the other, with courteous

manners and invitations to dance that result in the touching of navels, Batuque dance

reminding us of fertility rites. In the present days, the reasons behind that feast are the

joy, the playfulness, and the will of not letting this expression die. It begins around a

bonfire and ends only next day when the sun is high up in the sky.