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Having ten months of existence in December 2008, São Paulo Companhia de Dançapresents numbers that show its presence is already spreading throughout Brazil, with a comprehensive range of activities. Among these numbers, we find: over 19 thousand spectators, out of which 8 thousand participated in educational programs and 40 performances, distributed in 4 capitals and 3 cities in the state of São Paulo. (Read here about the controversy surrounding the creation of the company)

A Company such as this one, that has the presentation of a classic repertoire as backbone, rouses extreme passions. On one side, there are those longing for classic repertoire as supreme manifestation of beauty in dance. On the other, those who could evoke translator of André Rivoire, Guilherme de Almeida, to say that Sleeping Beauty is dead for having slept too much.

A previous controversial factor was the label “dance of excellence” attached to the Company by some of the people responsible for its creation when its existence was announced. In the academic circuit the neighboring expression “island of excellence” has a circumscribed meaning previously accepted by the interested community, with apport of resources for the space existence, equipment and staff exclusively dedicated, aiming at the quality of production.

However, in the artistic world of dance the evaluation of what is produced has a multitude of criteria that not always coincide with consensus. Many times an important production comes from individuals or groups that depend on irregular financial influx and that have difficulty in having adequate places and situations for the presentation of their work. And in spite of everything the result can be the reality of a work of art destined to last.

The artistic meaning can many times be obscured when we act as a periphery without center, as defined by Sérgio Buarque de Hollanda. There is the risk of putting the “excellence” aspect side by side with “classic ballet”, in a nostalgically colonial Eurocentrism.

The case is Sleeping Beauty is not dead, but awakes from her sleep to permanently live with readings and re-readings. Including the most acid and omnipresent, that can be seen scattered in fragments on Youtube, created exactly by the tribe of those who can handle classic tradition with ironic surgical precision: Mats Ek, making a deep incision on that paramount of Russian imperial style, Petipa’s Sleeping Beauty and William Forsythe with Impressing the Czar, a denial and passionate recreation of classic tradition.

Having said that, we have São Paulo Companhia de Dança, directed by Iracity Cardoso and Inês Bogéa, which states to be willing to bring the tradition of classic ballet and its contemporary unfoldings. A repertoire company in a broad sense and also inserting original creations.

In the short period of less than a semester, the Company brought four different pieces, defying its young dancers to a double difficult initiation ritual. First, due to the scarcity of schools capable of offering a pre-professional transition to most of them. Second, due to a diversity of repertoire that, even within a determined classic tradition brings stylistic problems that are not always easy to handle. At Royal Ballet’s peak, one was either a Frederick Ashton dancer or a Kenneth McMillan dance. But challenges don´t mean impossibility.

The debut choreography – Polígono – by Alession Silvestrin, was presented with clarity and precision in August 2008. Although, exactly for being one of the variable current re-readings of the classic ballet, fluency sometimes halted because of the transition jump it represented to most dancers, trained only in small sections of a traditional repertoire. On the choreographer’s side, the choice of a contemporary reading of Bach’s Oferenda Musical by group Het Collectief, which incorporated Webern and Jimi Hendrix in its interpretative texture, suggested a range of colors and perspective that were not entirely present in the work.

Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that Het Collectief’s director, Thomas Dieltjens, saw in the creation of Silvestrin, which he got to know through a DVD, a magnificent translation of Bach’s polyphony.

In November 2008, the Company presented a new program, with three new choreographies Les Noces, Entreato and Serenade. Les Noces, by Bronislava Nijinska, dated back from 1923 and has music by Stravinsky, who wished the ballet were presented as divertissement, like a masquerade. In spite of the composer’s wishes, Nijinska created a piece with stern lines, economical in the use of dance steps, taking us to a wedding ceremony belonging to a folkloric ritual, but simultaneously modernist.

In Les Noces, the rythmm and metric of phrases are as structural in dance as they are in music, offering considerable difficulty to dancer from anywhere. The deep knowledge of the piece and the didactic ability of restaging director Maria Palmeirim, besides the efficient choreographic assistance from Suzana Mafra allowed us to have with São Paulo Companhia de Dança a beautiful and articulate perception of Bronislava Nijinska’s world and the impact of the so-called Russian Ballets. We saw bodies intertwined with ritual tapes like the ones in processions of Círio de Nazaré and pilgrimages of Padre Cícero. Sharp-cornered figures cut out like the xylographic prints of Gilvam Samico, from the northeast region of Brazil. And also the dry and unforeseen leaps, with arms and torsos curved towards the ground, like the post-modern choreographies of Merce Cunningham.

There are some problems yet to be solved in Les Noces. Like, for example, the dramatic scenes, almost static and with scarce mimics, representing the separation of the engaged couple from their parent’s world and their first youth. The understanding of the dramatic gestures in the many varieties of classic ballet is permanently as great a challenge as the virtuosity of steps.

Among two iconic repertoire pieces, the choreography Entreato , by Brazilian Paulo Caldas, was a more than welcome and successful contemporary creation for the Company. A revealing moment of the importance of this contemporary presence was the performance of dancer Yoshi Suzuki , with a fluent use of the torso combined with a precise use of the hands for determining volumes of energy in space, show a versatility that will certainly become a characteristic of this company.

The last play of the second program of the year was George Balanchine’s Serenade,, with Piotr I. Tchaikosky’s Serenade for Strings in C major, in four parts, the position of the third and the fourth movements in the original score were switched, as to suggestively ending with an elegiac larghetto. Serenade, which premiered with ballet students in 1934 and with professional dancers in 1935, has been restaged by The Balanchine Trust, for the many companies that are up to their standards.

Balanchine’s piece still presents difficulties for the Company, specially when it comes to the fluency of arms and control subtleties of the extension of the torso and the placement of the head. Nevertheless, those who watched the performances in the beginning and at the end of November, in São Paulo, could observe a steady progress of the whole cast, easily detectable in the increasing precision of the corps de ballet.

One of the especial moments to follow the quality of such progress was the small group of five dancers in the beginning of the third movement of the choreography. In the beginning, eyes gently met and arms intertwined, one of many reminiscences of Petipa’s imperial school, which soon explodes into a quick dance, with a joyous Russian melodic theme coming in. A fast and precise combination of leaps with displacements and direction changes, taking to the maximum performance level what the ballet students do every day: temps levé, piqué tour, assemblé en tournant, arms going over the fifth position…

There is a long way ahead until the maturity and the absolute artistic identity of São Paulo Campanhia de Dança are reached. However, in the last accords of Serenade final elegy, the luminous and slender figure of one last dancer, Luiza Lopes, who lifts on pointe with arched torso and open arms taking part in court, is a symbol of an entire successful work.

The direction of this company has been developing a broad ranged educational program and also invites specialists to follow the daily activities of company. Some groups of researchers could, in a especial way, get involved in a productive exchange. For example, those interested in the relationship between dance history and how the bodies of today adapt or not to the specific aesthetic demands: not everything is only a matter of technique and interpretative ability.

Carlo Blasis was a ballet maitre from the 19th century, author of The Code of Terpsichore, who studied the anatomists of his time crossing the boundaries between science and art. Thus, as another example of collaboration, if we have a multitude of technical and aesthetic approaches in dance, we have the ideal ground for the meeting of researchers from the fields of health and biomechanic of human movements and professionals involved in the daily activities of this Company, following the footsteps of master Blasis.

Bergson Queiroz is a dance researcher. Participant of Laboratório de Biomecânica do Movimento e Postura Humana – USP.