Lavagem

Brazilian choreographer and performer Alice Ripoll has involved in her shows performers from all over her country, many of them from the Favelas of Rio and and São Paulo. With six performers from her REC company, she presents “Lavagem” in Rome, a national premiere at the India Theater thanks to the co-production of Teatro di Roma - Teatro Nazionale and Romaeuropa Festival.

In Brazilian Portuguese, the word “lavagem” refers to both the housework, often invisible to the eye, carried out by the women and to money laundering. But it also evokes brainwashing and purification and rebirth rituals in equal measure. Mixing together reality and fantasy, the six dancers transform the stage into a playful space by dancing with water, buckets and soap bubbles: habitual gestures and ordinary objects are turned into the material for a choreography which questions the very meaning of the act of cleaning, taking it to a new poetic and political level and investigating its scenic and historical unfolding. The soap foam colors the bodies and hints at invisibility; the bubbles suggest a world of dreams that contrasts with the severe lack of social mobility in the real world.

Performers: Alan Ferreira, Hiltinho Fantástico, Katiany Correia, Rômulo Galvão, Tony Hewerton, Tuany Nascimento

Photo romaeuropa.net © Renato Mangolin