![]() ![]() To watch Sambadrome videoclips is to be drawn close to the conclusion that it’s all about sex, stupid. Then there are questions about the thesis that the good sambista must be driven by a sense of and a quest for particular Brazilian meaning. But she stands (or dances) as a case demonstrating that an outsider can become not just a competent but a creative and inspiring sambista. True, she has spent years of her life in Rio and Salvador, and has immersed herself in Afro-Brazilian communities of Candomblé (Afro-Brazilian religion) and Capoeira (Afro-Brazilian martial art). This New Yorker not only writes authoritatively about samba but is recognized in Brazil and internationally as a foremost samba performer. However, there are several things to consider before that doubt puffs up into a full-fledged excuse for samba ineptitude. ![]() No matter how adept, well taught and practiced, I could probably never samba well because, though a close, occasionally participant observer in Brazil, I’m not driven by roots and everyday life experience to express through feet, thighs, belly and arms, a Brazilian identity and soul. The good sambista is driven with passionate intensity to express, celebrate and protest the experiences of everyday Brazilians, particularly of Afro-Brazilians in the favelas. The good sambista is passionately involved, in and through the dancing, in the articulation of a contested history of race and gender relations in Brazil. These writers suggest to me that good samba must be samba that is meaningful to body, mind and soul. The lesson: it’s only in practice that a body attuned like mine to regular 2/4 or 3/4 beats could begin to flow with the regular irregularities of samba music.īut would practice, given fitness and technical assistance, make perfect? I have my doubts, informed by some of the finest writing about the history and performance of samba from the likes of Barbara Browning and Hermano Vianna. The Sambadrome dancers hone their performances the year round in the ensaios (rehearsals) of their samba schools. In a given year carnaval-not quite “carnival” in English- comes often for those Brazilian friends and the street dancers. I need no help, though, to realize that I can’t samba because I don’t samba, except in my head, on any but rare carnival occasions. So if I can recognize and savor it, why can’t I samba? Well, some of the explanation may stay between my analyst and me. No single word-graceful, frantic or sexy-will do to describe the real thing, though samba is all those things. Then stops for a nanosecond, only to fill again with movement the fleeting void left by the missed beat of the samba music. ![]() Arms extended, the feet seem to transmit a rhythm to be riffed by hips and belly and shoulders as the whole body swings, dips to the ground. Real samba is a body unselfconsciously flowing in response to a syncopated beat, melding curious indolence and sexual charge, form and spontaneity. I can recognize that in videoclips from Rio’s Sambadrome, in the street during the Carnivals of Olinda and Salvador, or when Brazilian friends dance in celebration of a World Cup victory. My samba, though, always feels, as it no doubt looks, like a stilted attempt at the dance, rather than the real thing. I like dancing, and no better dance than samba. What has happened to the dance of racial democracy?
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