08.08.2018
HENRIQUE ROCHELE
Bruno Beltrão's creation for the Niterói Street Group is technical, mysterious, provocative and almost religious.
Written for Criticatividade
From the mysterious title of "Inoah", which Bruno Beltrão signs for his Grupo de Rua, it's hard to guess anything. On stage, we are confronted with a dense, high-quality work, but without any concern for telling us what it is, or what it is about. We don't find any of the usual support: press releases and publicity for the short season in São Paulo focus on the fame of the group and the artist, and their international recognition, refusing to tell us more about the work.
The hypotheses, then, are built up by the scene itself. It is open and spacious, dominated by a strip of narrow screens at the top of the back and sides of the stage, which act as a horizon line in projections. It creates a cut-out of the stage space, but without determining a space for the action, which is developed by the body work of tension and tone of a talented and highly controlled cast.
Quickly, "control" suggests itself as a theme. Here, the control of the body aesthetically provokes the perception of a form of time control, which runs through the work continuously, but without being marked by the triviality of a clock hand. Time here is of a different kind. Ritualistic, alchemical, combative. Religious, perhaps? Does it reveal individuals to us, or is it the universe that shows itself?
With the high capacity of the performers, we could be led to great feats of gymnastics - and these do appear from time to time - but it's the poetic construction that stands out in the mysterious "Inoah".
I went looking for information about them - sparse, scarce, as if they were a cult about which little is said.On the website of Tanz im August, the German festival where the work will be presented at the end of the month, some indication: "In 'Inoah', he deals with the political situation in his country, Brazil: against a backdrop of corruption scandals, Beltrão asks himself how we connect with the environment and are influenced by events and ideologies".At the same time, I feel more found and more lost in the work, and I end up admiring the result even more.I re-read my notes, drawing parallels between what I had thought of as articulations of the macro (the use of the body in space) with the micro (portrayed by a bit of choreography dedicated to the hands).I think about the idea of the devotional and an initiation ritual and how this might reflect the way we individually deal with the world and what is external to us.
Suggested by the horizon line and its passage of time, by the extremely precise marking of the dancers together and by the cleanliness of the execution that enhances the choreography, the raw, strong movement is sublimated into ways of escaping from the ground that make the notion of gravity disappear.
When the dancers bounce from the ground back up, they seem to fall backwards, as if they were astronauts exploring unknown space.
This kind of effect is one of the hallmarks of a well-curated poetics of movement, worked on over the course of projects that demand time and investment. It's no coincidence that the work has been co-produced by five festivals.I end up drawing another parallel with the Brazilian situation - that of investment in art.What happens to our arts when they are invested in?
The answer, on stage: excellence.