Camélia

The scenography, by Beatriz Milhazes, is an offshoot from that created for the choreographic work Tempo de Verão. Five three-dimensional chandeliers project a complex function. A dance of the gaze, which is not allowed to settle, but is forced to peruse the countless articulated and superimposed geometric forms. The dense field of colour sets an itinerary for dizzying sensations, orchestrating an encounter with images in motion. Beneath this dangling golden menagerie, dancers draw gestural patterns with their bodies over the course of three interludes. The scene reveals a rigorous structure in which pellicles of movement shimmer into a large collage that fills the invisible field of the soul. The intimate dance transforms the dancers, scenery, music and the surrounding architecture into an amorous mass moved by the desire to take a stroll through the other. The soundtrack ushers us into an ontogenesis of Brazilian music from the clavier and viol melodies of the 18th century through to modernism and concretism. In this special staging at the Filomena Matarazzo Maternity Hospital, the living memory of the Guarani Indians—the original owners of the Land of Brazil—is uttered in this forgotten world through the voices of the tribe’s children. Old songs and sounds reveal the sacred. Cultural values invoke existence; the desire to reflect on our contemporary selves and glean the meaning of rebirth.