Oralidançando encantados e encantaria: um passeio guiado através da cultura da oralidade em Lençóis da Bahia

Abstract

This research works with the relationship between dance, culture and orality, and is structured as a guided tour through the voices of the masters of the city of Lençóis in Bahia, located in the Chapada da Diamantina, and recognized for their stories of Encantarias [Enchantments]. In its development, we present an initial survey of the Encantados [Enchanteds], who are animals, hybrid creatures and spectres, with striking characteristics and magical functions, and who inhabit the narratives of Lençóis, embodied in the knowledge and rituals of Brazilian northeastern popular culture. In this sense, it proposes a shared dialog of experience/living with the aforementioned community through stories told as Oralituras [Orality-Oraliteracy] (Martins, 2003) and Escrevivências [writing-living] (Evaristo, 2003) and following a performative methodology of participant observation, converging to refer to the socalled Oralidanças [Oralidancing] and their oralidançar (Cia Balé Baião, 2021), which are dramaturgical dance propositions with the performance of/in the culture of orality; and also in making-thinking-researching dance as an artificial action (Arrais, 2013). These exploratory, investigative and conceptual movements were configured in the dance creation workshop Dançando o Conto da Serpente da Ponte do Rio Lençóis [Dancing the Tale of the Serpent of the Lençóis River Bridge] and in the danceperformance A Mulher d'Branco [Woman in White], mobilized by the spoken narratives of the gold miner Djalma de Jesus Carvalho (Usquinha) and Mestre Aurino, from Lagoa Encantada [Echanted Lagoon], composing a proposal for a musical and video dance rooted in the quilombola community of Remanso. These three creations are based on the poetics of the enchanted, based on the question: how do the enchanted and their enchantments awaken poetics in my body to develop a methodology for creating dance? In this sense, the artistic presentation Terra Vermelha [Red Earth] (Pereira, 2014-2024) was our point of departure and arrival, intersecting with the methodology “Jogo da Construção Poética” [Poetic Construction Game] (Machado, 2017), already from undergraduate research, in order to continue mobilizing this relationship between dance and the body that dances with the body that speaks and tells stories, in entering “Oralidancing” this world of enchantments, thus demarcating the aesthetic-political force of tradition, memory and ancestry in contemporary times, with a strong indigenous influence (Kopenawa; Albert, 2015) and African influence (Conrado, 2006).