movimento / Foto: Mauricio Simonetti

The Vid.BR project was presented during the III PlayRec – Recife International Videodance Festival, which ends this Thursday (5/11) Click here to check out the gallery idança created with videos of artists who participated in the event.

Videodance is indeed a hybrid language! Its definition matters less, what really matters is that it is possible to express dance in contact with the language of video and upon it, to be in many different places: in a internet website, in a dance festival, in an art gallery or in an old movie theater in the center of São Paulo. A part of the artist’s work is in a little disk that can travel the world in a poetic specific of dance for video. This mix strengthens dance, creating spaces to explode the issues inherent to contemporary dance.
The Vid.BR research is a mapping of the videodance artistic language in Brazil, carried out by Acervo Mariposa with open methodology, according to what the interviewed and mapped artists would tell us. The so configured initiative showed us the infinite forms in which dance could infiltrate itself upon video. For example, Mostra Lanterninha, a showcase produced by Acervo in partnership with Galeria Olido that is already in its second edition and is screened in an old movie theater with 236 seats. The Vid.BR research feeds the showcase, opens space for the national productions and seeks to develop an audience for the language.

The search for experimentation with video, a legacy of videoart, is present in the videodance produced in Brazil. This quality is somehow related to the scarcity of resources for production. Such scarcity forces us to search for new perspectives on the body given the material we have in hand, keeping in mind that the history of our cinema, which for many years didn´t receive any incentive for production and counted only on “an idea in the head and a camera in the hand”. We could say that videodance has a camera in the hand and the body as subject.
Video in Latin America has a characteristic linked to a political discourse. The focus of videodance in Brazil is in the bodies in a state of urgency in the growing metropolis and rampant chaos, in arid landscapes or in intimate environments. Different from some American or European videodances or cinedances in which the body is Apollonian, in Latin America, in general, video has this provocative and political quality, as Rodrigo Alonso* points out.

Qualitatively, there are still few choreographers dedicated to the videodance language. However a new ascending generation is making itself represented. Some names: Alex Soares(SP), O12(SP), Cia. Vitrola Quântica (SP), Carolina Cony(RJ), Celina Portella and Elisa Pessoa (RJ), Coletivo Molin TL. (MG), Cia. Flux (MG), Pedro Bastos (MG), Diego Mac (RS), Elisa Schmit (SC), Andréia Bardawil (CE), among others, have been developing research along with their artistic work, in which video is part of a choreographic thinking.

Nowadays, the training of the dancer who wishes to infiltrate in this language often goes through a multimedia course, given the necessity to seek another niche, the information for the production of their work. Better yet, many dancers have associated with a videoartist, who in my understanding have been responsible for the great development of videodance in Brazil. Many are interested in this exchange between video and dance and this hybridism has been giving good results, for instance: Alexandre Veras (CE), Breno César (PE), Oscar Malta (PE),André Martinez (SP), Kika Nicolela (SP), Rodrigo Gontijo (SP), Tatiana Gentille (RJ).

Recently, new education centers for this language have been established, such as the post-graduate course in Movement Aesthetics: Dance, Videodance and Multimedia at Faculdade Angel Vianna (RJ), coordinated by Paulo Caldas. Or the research group Technologic Poetics coordinated by Ivani Santana (BA), which develops Mapa D2. The academic production has also been growing a lot and many young dances, still in college, have been interested in discussing dance pedagogy through videodance. Two examples from the extremes of the country are Ana Pi, oriented by professor Sérgio Pereira Andrade and co-oriented by professor Clélia Ferraz Pereira de Queiroz, UFBA and Sarah Ferreira, from UDESC, oriented by professor Milton de Andrade.

Vid.BR is already moving towards the second year of research and Acervo Mariposa intends to keep mapping the artists. In this second phase, the research will dedicate itself to also track the Festivals and events that incorporate or deal with video and dance, such as the pioneer Dança em Foco festival, which, after four years of intense activity, visits all the country’s region screening national productions. Other festivals like Play REC – Recife International Videodance Festival and Bienal de Dança de Fortaleza, which opened space for the screening of videodance, develop not only an audience, but also the artists who seek to improve their knowledge of this language.

These brief appointments now confirm what Liana Gesteira’s article, Videodança: Território Fértil pointed to about this language. After only a few years, videodance is still resistance territory, not only for dance, but also a resistance of the art that needed to search for better public policies in the country. There are still very few grants (the only one around is Rumos Videodança do Instituto Itaú Cultural) and we have little space for the screening a great demand of our production, the work has been to produce resisting, resist producing. Because it all indicates that eyes can turn to dance created in this media.

To get to know a little more about the videodance production, not only from Brazil but also from Latin America, visit the www.movimento.org video page. There are more than 800 videos from the most different styles and themes.

Rita Tatiana Cavassa is responsible for the Vid.BR research and Cultural Manager of Acervo Mariposa. She has a degree in Communication of the Arts of the Body – PUC-SP.

* Alonso, Rodrigo Videoarte e Videodanca em uma (in)Certa America Latina – Dança em Foco Magazine 2007.