Brazil! Brazil! A look at Brazil's burgeoning dance scene.

Endless lines in banks, faulty social services, flooded streets that have you swimming out of your car. In the theaters, burnt-out lighting instruments and floors that are about to cave in. What's the Brazilian response to this pandemonium? "Urn jeitinho," or "Don't worry, we'll work it out."

Brazil, land of improvisation, is many countries within a country. Neither Sao Paulo nor Rio de Janeiro represents the rest of Brazil any more than New York does the United States. The full complement of paradisiacal elements is here: the swaying palms, tropical rainforest, brilliant flora and animal life. And every year at Carnival, there's the samba (see "And of course the samba").

Today 50 million Brazilians, almost one third of the population, live on less than 300 reais a month (about $140). How, one might ask, can any art develop much less flourish in a country with so many disadvantages? I say it is our ingenuity as well as our hearts that allow us to dance with what remains.

Brazil is overflowing with dance; it has emerged from religion and folklore as well as from outsiders. Teachers and visitors drawn here by Carnival or other events stayed and influenced the culture. In staying and sharing, they, too, were influenced.

Ballet took root in Brazil when the Teatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro developed its ballet company in the 1930s. Tatiana Leskova, a former Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo dancer, led the municipal ballet company in the 1950s and trained many ballerinas including the great Marcia Haydee. Audiences were hanging from the balconies when Leskova staged Swan Lake, Giselle, and Aurora's Wedding. Today the repertoire of the Bale do Teatro Municipal includes Balanchine's Serenade, Nijinsky's The Afternoon of a Faun and The Rite of Spring as well as work by current choreographers.

In 1956 Dalal Achcar founded the Ballet Association of Rio de Janeiro, which hosted guest stars like Nureyev, Bujones, Makarova, and Fonteyn. It was at her school that Marcelo Gomes received his early training (see cover story). Maria Luisa Noronha, a more recent ballet matriarch, directs the state school, now called Dancas Maria Olenewa, whose dancers feed the ranks of the Ball do Teatro Municipal.

There are also official state schools in Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, and Guritiba, all affiliated with municipal theaters. Plus, the Bolshoi opened a ballet school in the state of Santa Gatarina in 2000. In its first year, more than 20,000 children applied for 40 places for boys and 40 for girls. Even though there is strong resistance against boys becoming dancers, the possibility of escaping impoverished conditions is incentive enough for low-income families to allow their children to participate.

The many dance companies here are reflections of contemporary Brazil: unpredictable, good humored, and abundant in contrasts. Here the modern coexists with the traditional, the urban with the rustic, the skyscraper with the horse-drawn carriage, the hot with the, well, very much hotter.

Stagium emerged in the 1970s, when a military dictatorship controlled what could or couldn't be presented publicly. They brought dance to favelas (slums), prisons, and Indian tribes. Based in Sao Paulo, Stagium integrated its indigenous roots into classical ballet. Using music by the Xingu Indians, they performed a ballet based on an aboriginal ritual to honor the dead.

One of Brazil's most active educators came from the environment cultivated by Stagium. Graziela Rodrigues uses elements of Brazilian culture in her classes and rehearsals. During the improvisations, dancers step on smooth river stones, small mountain rocks, and tiny seashells to sensitize their feet while a constant, churning drumbeat gradually takes over their bodies. Rodrigues aims at discovering a hidden story within each body. In her latest work A Valsa Desassossego (The Restless Waltz), a young girl hangs from a scaffold by ropes, dressed in a skirt made of compressed garbage from the streets, appearing like a sacrificial lamb.

Another company that works with a homegrown form is DanceBrazil, which draws from the martial art of capoeira. Jelon Vieira grew up on the streets of Bahia and survived by learning to dodge kicks, plant bandstands, and improvise fighting tactics. After studying dance in the U.S., he combined these experiences with capoeira to create a personal style for DanceBrazil, which often tours the U.S. His school works with people from all ages and professions--even the Brazilian soccer player Pele has studied capoeira with Vieira.

Creatively speaking, there's an open road ahead for contemporary companies based in classical training. Hulda Bittencourt, creator of Cisne Negro (Black Swan), put her ballet students together with athletes from the University of Sao Paulo to form a group whose dancing is spontaneous, risk-taking, and energetically charged. Their repertoire has works by choreographers from across Europe as well as from Argentina and Israel.

Grupo Cena 11, from Florianopolis, is even more audacious. Their freefalling from stilts and plunging from other risky positions take one's breath away. With choreographies entitled Violencia (Violence) or Respostas sobre Dor (Answers about Pain), bodies become battlegrounds, and a fusion of art, science, and technology challenges our conventions.

The exuberant Grupo Corpo melds together movement invention, rhythm, and an explosion of color. Corpo (body) infects classical steps with weight in the hips; their earthiness mingles with flickering arm gestures. One is amazed by how many rhythms can fit into one body. Choreographer Rodrigo Pederneiras' Bach piece uses samba-like footwork while other accents shoot through the legs and torso, then a pirouette or a suspension in the arm cuts through the phrase. Funded by the Brazilian oil company Petrobras, Corpo has performed at Brooklyn Academy of Music and other international venues.

The irrepressible creativity of Graciela Figueiroa, who danced with Twyla Tharp in the '60s, influenced a generation of performers and choreographers. Run and slap the floor with your feet, keep going, hold your partner around his waist, keep going, and now jump up on his shoulders, keep going. In the 1970s Figueiroa (now living in Uruguay) founded Grupo Coringa, once described as "a band of bats following a wild mare." Coringa (which means joker) was open to anyone: fat, skinny, amateurs, professionals, tall, short--everyone would dance.

Deborah Colker, who emerged from Coringa, has been an international success. She combines sports, everyday activities, and a variety of dance idioms. From Figueiroa she inherited a respect for individuality, musicality, and an ability to splice together different kinds of movement. Based in Rio, her company is touring England this month.

Also from Rio de Janeiro is Marcia Milhazes, a ballet dancer who studied at the Laban Centre in London. Her latest work, Tempo de Verao, (Summertime) borders between Brazil's cultured and the trendy. Inspired by the waltzes of her childhood, she created a languorous fluidity and sultry physicality that bring to mind images of summer.

Creating a completely different mood--and using intrepid tactics to do so--the dancers of Quasar Dance Company seem to turn themselves inside out or upside down, and move in ways that shout imagination and craftsmanship. Impulses in the body start in one place and jump to another and then lift the dancer and send him off in a new direction. Based in Goiania, Quasar has danced throughout Brazil and is making more frequent visits to cities in the U.S.

A distinguished name in Brazilian tap dancing is Cintia Martin and her Companhia Claquettes. Based in Rio, she has danced all over Brazil and travels to the U.S. for tap festivals. She has used electronic platforms and engineered multimedia shoes. Other Brazilian tap dancers are Cintia Chamecki (See "Blame It on the Bossa Nova," Nov. 2004), Christiane Matallo, Samuel and Fernanda Faez, Steve Harper, and Leonardo Costa Dias.

Brazil has many festivals and competitions for the performing arts. (Even our minister of culture, Gilberto Gil, was discovered through a festival.) And in Rio de Janeiro the city-funded Centro Coreografico (Choreographic Center) has given dance groups the chance to work in excellent conditions (though a fully equipped theater is still rare).

Today many dancers from Brazil work in major international companies. Leticia Oliveira is at Houston Ballet (see "25 to Watch," Jan.), and Thiago Soares is a first soloist with The Royal Ballet. Pina Bausch, the Cullberg Ballet, Martha Graham, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, and the Joffrey Ballet have all welcomed dancers from Brazil.

Brazilian dancers who leave their country carry their curiosity and creativity into the world. Those who remain have learned adaptability--jeitinho--and perseverance in facing difficulty. Besides, as Antony Tudor once commented when someone asked him what makes an artist: "Staying power!" he said. "Staying power."

Go to www.dancemagazine.com for an expanded version of this article.

AND OF COURSE, THE SAMBA

Almost every visitor to Brazil is attracted by the magic and staggering splendor of Carnival--always seven weeks before Easter Sunday. In Rio (and other cities) each year samba schools compete in categories such as costumes, bateria (the drumming section), floats, formations, and dancing. In other words they've gotta sell it!

The samba, born in Rio de Janeiro in the early 20th century, mixed the rhythms of the Lundu (the Portuguese called this dance of African origin "lewd"), the Frevo (a highly agitated dance, plenty of Russian-like squats and legs kicks), and the polka. It invites continuous improvisation, which has become a mark of Brazilian identity and expression.

Each samba school chooses a theme and parades in front of a panel of judges as well as a frenetic, dancing public for 45 minutes. The schools are a mixture of professionals, amateur samba lovers--and even tourists. Celebrities are usually invited, and together with the school they form a contagious electric current that radiates out to the crowd.

Samba schools work the whole year toward this day. For many lower-income participants, Carnival is a powerful incentive, a sustaining dream, in which for a short moment they can rise above the poverty that envelops them. All this ends abruptly after the judges' decision, and everybody picks up and begins the same process for next year.--H.C.

Holly Cavrell, a professor in Dance at the University of Campinas, Brazil, has danced with Martha Graham, Paul Sanasardo, and 5 X 2 Plus. She has taught and choreographed in Venezuela, Mexico, and Europe.