Bruno Beltrão é um jovem artista brasileiro. Em seus trabalhos, ele brinca habilmente com as expectativas do público. Não está interessado em demonstrar um alcance acrobático perigoso, ele tenta redirecionar a dança de rua para a linguagem artística. Começou sua carreira como dançarino de hip-hop aos treze anos de idade em sua cidade natal, Niterói, um subúrbio do Rio de Janeiro. Aos dezesseis anos, fundou sua própria companhia e, aos vinte, voltou-se para a dança contemporânea.
Beltrão uses hip-hop, video, and a dash of controlled chaos to make the audience question everything that is said, done, and danced.
After all, like a good conversation between friends who get lost in chat, "Telesquat" is about finding meaning where you least expect it — or finding no meaning at all and being okay with that.
And between a dance step and a projected caption, what is done is to remind us that art is sometimes just a somewhat foggy mirror in which we try to see ourselves better.
CONCEPTION AND ARTISTIC DIRECTION
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR AND ASSAYER
LIGHT DESIGNER
DANCERS
BRUNO BELTRÃO
GABRIELA MONNERAT
RENATO MACHADO
EDUARDO HERMANSON
EDUARDO REIS
GHEL NIKAIDO
ALEXANDRE DE LIMA
UGO ALEXANDRE
GRUPO
The sensation of the festival was Telesquat. It's true that they use hiphop as a language of movement, but hiphop is just the starting point for a formidable explosion of language and images. Four men line up, motionless, or perform a simple gesture in a square. Captions describe the gesture, while a commentator interprets exactly what the men are doing. They appear to have multiple identities, demonstrating a penguin dance or going to war with aliens. Fantasy, highly complex dance codes and spoken and written language merge here into an extremely tangled chaos. Several times we hear "He wants to say something": this is precisely the problem, in the midst of this overabundance of information.
When viewers are asked about their experience, the readings are simultaneously personal and disparate. In this way, simple fantasies about hiphop as a universal language and global understanding are undermined. Telesquat turns out to be a kind of very violent and belligerent video game, say at level 10, in which the rules, language levels and amounts of information get out of control. There remains only the excess and the men who desire that excess.
Festival international de dança Klapstuk #11 em Louvain
De Morgen
9 Oct 2003 • French
A performance that offered pure visual pleasure in an intriguing way, but which openly addressed conceptual issues, was "Telesquat" by Grupo de Rua de Niterói by Brazilian choreographer Bruno Beltrão. Beltrão's dance is based on "street dance" but, as demonstrated in a small exhibition, you can use it to create poignant choreographic images. The same happens in "Telesquat". From a simple presentation by the four performers, an action develops to which more and more layers of meaning are added, especially when the four dancers are simultaneously present on video screens and live. Here, Beltrão explores the impact of television culture and video games on the psychological reality of young people. However, it does not do so in an allegorical or pedantic way, but in a way that gradually resembles more and more a house party. Analysis and perception enter into a curious marriage here.
