Banca de DEFESA: LUCAS DE OLIVEIRA PEREIRA

Uma banca de DEFESA de MESTRADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : LUCAS DE OLIVEIRA PEREIRA
DATE: 27/02/2025
TIME: 15:00
LOCAL: On-line
TITLE:

Xirê Odara: The Celebration of the Black Body in Movement in the Dance of the Orixás

KEY WORDS:

Dance. Orixá Dance. Composition. Aquilombamento. Body~Manifesto.

PAGES: 190
BIG AREA: Lingüística, Letras e Artes
AREA: Artes
SUBÁREA: Dança
SUMMARY:

This work is the result of research developed in the field of performing arts, profoundly influenced by Afro-diasporic motor religiosity (Ligiéro, 2011). The study was conducted at the Candomblé Ilê Olorum, a house of Afro-Indigenous culture and religiosity, between 2022 and 2024. The research is structured around the dimension of belonging, as the researcher is a son of this house of Axé. The investigation aimed to understand, through the technique of “participant observation” (Minayo, 2001; Demo, 2014; Severino, 2017), the meanings and perceptions emerging from the dance of the orixás, performed during the ritual and celebratory ceremony of the Candomblé xirê at this terreiro. From this understanding, the research sought to develop a choreographic composition through bodily experimentation. The poetic proposal, titled Xirê Odara, focuses on the acceptance of black bodies in Candomblé as manifestations of dance, quilombola resistance, beauty, art, culture, pedagogy, and politics. The Candomblé xirê, as an ancestral power of black people, became the research’s primary achievement. In proposing an artistic production in dance, it was necessary to embrace and celebrate black bodies (Sodré, 1999; 2019), rewrite narratives and myths (Medeiros, 2021), reconstitute the spectacular and imagistic meanings of Africanness (Moreira, 2022), and affirm the body as power (Silva, 2022). What was constructed on this journey was power. A black body, when it finds and recognizes itself as quilombola, is nothing other than power. Thus, describing the dance in the xirê, recreating it in poetic composition, and making it signify the affirmation of African ancestry goes beyond viewing it merely as the heritage of people who were enslaved and freed themselves through continuous resistance struggles. Rather, it asserts a stance in the ongoing fight against colonization, from its origins to the present day. With this research (and its poetic derivation), we propose to discuss the meanings that can emerge from a contemporary choreographic composition based on the motives of the orixá dance in Candomblé. At the same time, we reaffirm our social identity through the construction of belonging and the representation of dancing black bodies. To do so, we were compelled to engage in a profound reflection on who we are and on how Brazilian society has historically constructed the image of people of African descent, shaping it within an imaginary and through various institutionalized forms of racism (colonial, religious, structural, etc.). Creating a dance composition based on the observation of orixá dances as they occur in a Candomblé terreiro was an act of becoming black, embracing the symbolic inheritance of ancestral meaning, and celebrating the quilombola essence of black bodies in Xirê Odara, which emerges from the sacred dance of the orixás.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Presidente - 1958705 - MARCILIO DE SOUZA VIEIRA
Interna - ***.043.118-** - LARA RODRIGUES MACHADO - UNICAMP
Externa à Instituição - STEPHANIE CAMPOS PAIVA MOREIRA