May 2014. Marcelo Evelin creates 'Batucada' for the Kunstenfestivaldesarts, in the heart of Brussels, the capital of Europe struggling with an economic crisis.
The performances take place exactly in the week of European elections. Anti-European parties will win 143 seats out of 751 parliamentary seats in total, some of these parties are outspokenly racist.
A few weeks later FIFA will broadcast commercial world cup images from Brasil around the world. Mainstream-media are hardly reporting about the social protest in the streets of the big cities and even less about the violent repression against these protests.
Marcelo Evelin brings his dream team for 'Batucada' together in this context. A motley crew of performers, dancers, musicians and other creative people of different ages and from about 30 countries.
Latin-America, Europe, Africa and Asia are represented. The macro-economic constitution of the world is physically present in the bodies and personalities of the performers. The world in a condensed, miniature format. Each participant brings his background, prejudices and ideals. This results in an unexpectedly intense roller-coaster ride of interpersonal confrontations, conflicts and meeting minds.
Those confrontations, discussions and conflicts are not only part of the anecdotes around this project. Once in a while they touch the core of what 'Batucada' is about. The creation of a new way of collaborating and living together.
During the rehearsals simple tasks are often repeated: follow another person, get into the other person, adapt to the other person’s movements and rhythms. Leadership is not accepted within the group. Everybody is free to do and act how she or he feels. Everybody is invited to strip off all clothes and attitudes, to put on the same mask in search of equality.
Tasks and improvisations are the foundations for a collective set of movements and references, for the construction of a group or community.
A set of typically Brazilian references is added when the group enters the old, abandonned movietheater Marivaux. The mask, CATIRINA, refers to the myth of Bumba-meu-boi and it traditionally plays with the gender issues of male and female. In addition the batucada, also the concepts of samba and arrastão are introduced.
Arrastão is a phenomenon from the beaches of Rio. Groups of poor people rob the beach population from all their most expensive accessories in a fast collective wave resulting in confusion and agression on the beach.
Confusion and aggression are experiences some people of the public relate to 'Batucada'. Even though the performers have worked hard during rehearsals to drop aggression and try to influence people to move or go with the flow just by a concentrated physical presence.
Confusion, the feeling of being aggressed and missing out on something are intimate, personal experiences and emotions. Each person has his or her personal experience. The volume of the performance space, the number of performers and spectator add to the sense of loss of control and direction. The mass and being soaked up by the masses are basic ingredients of the 'Batucada'-experience in Brussels. If you have missed it, here is a video report from Brussels and Frankfurt.
What does this 'Batucada' mean as a happening or performance in the end?
A hand out from Kunstenfestivaldesarts refers to Belgian painters Pieter Breughel the elder and Hieronymus Bosch. It is striking that people turn to painters to describe Marcelo Evelin's work, so let's add to this comparing Marcelo Evelin to another Belgian painter.
In front of some paintings by James Ensor in the 'Fin de Siècle museum' in Brussels, a revelation struck me.
While exploring the way the Getty Center in Los Angeles promotes their current Ensor-exhibition , The Scandalous Art of James Ensor, June 10 – September 7, 2014, the resemblances become really strong.
What they write about Ensor could work as a reflection on Marcelo Evelin's 'Batucada' too:
“He was irrepressibly inventive, probing the fantastic, bizarre, grotesque, caricatural, and satirical in a subversive, take-no-prisoners kind of way. Ensor took on all manner of social, cultural, and political hierarchies, ideologies,and pieties, not just with withering sarcasm and irony, but also with a kind of joyful ebullience that shares in the topsy-turvy spirit of Carnival.
His art invites us to escape, if only imaginatively, from the status quo.”
Could 'Batucada' be seen as an update of Ensor's painting 'Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889 '? The brash young artist James Ensor painted Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889 during a period of extraordinary artistic and political foment in his native Belgium. Huge in scale, complex in design and execution, and brimming with social commentary, the startling canvas presents a scene filled with clowns, masked figures, and—barely visible amid the swirling crowds—the tiny figure of Christ on a donkey entering the city of Brussels.
'Batucada' offers similar collapsing perspectives and multiple viewpoints. A mob, threatening to trample the viewer. A swirling parade, but here the leadershipfigure is completely missing. Only at the end the parade is succesful to break out from the old, abandonned cinema into a backstreet of Brussels. Nobody holds pamflets, flags nor slogans. We can see lots of people, some wear masks, some people are not masked.
Performers from Latin-America, Europe, Africa and Asia manifest with their movements, rythms, pots, sticks and their interaction with the audience how people in Brussels, Europe and worldwide relate to each other.
It invites us to escape, if only imaginatively, from the status quo.
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