Brazilian Bodies and Nationalism in Dance

Abstract

In 1886, two years prior to the final abolition of slavery in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro’s newspaper Gazeta de Noticias published Terpsícore, a short story by the mulatto writer Machado de Assis. There, the founder of Brazil’s Academy of Literature (Academia de Letras) told the story of Porfílio, a working-class man who falls in love with a ballroom dancer named Gloria. Porfílio is enchanted, Machado de Assis tells us, by Gloria’s way of dancing, not by her looks. This tropical version of the Greek and Roman muse of lyric poetry and dance (Terpsichore) moved, Machado de Assis writes, with a gracious and sensuous “mixture of swan and she-goat” (mistura de cisne e de cabrita: p. 20). Following the author’s inclination towards irony, this metaphor choreographs the juxtaposition of unlikely ideas, capturing that which was too transgressive and indecent to be described, yet too intoxicating to be ignored. But what exactly is the meaning of this uncanny metaphor? What sort of imaginary interpolation could resonate with the offspring of a horned ruminant known for its lively and frisky behavior with a typically all-white water bird notorious for its phallic neck? And, furthermore, what kind of daring acrobatic feat would this “crossbreed” idea have to execute in order to transform this unsettling mixture into Terpsichore’s “delight in dancing”?

At first, they were only a few; then, they were so many that this light source became a vision common to all. And then, they became a source of national pride, something one hadn’t been in the habit of feeling for quite some time around here.

Helena Katz, Grupo Corpo: Brazilian Dance Theatre