Lyon Biennale de la Danse.

Guy Darmet, artistic director of the Lyons Dance Biennial, discovered Brazilian dance while scouting for companies to present in the 1994 biennial that focused on Africa. (Earlier festivals have examined dance in France and the United States, among other places.) Visiting the Bahia region, Darmet realized that dance remains a part of daily life in Brazil; it also provides a social glue, as different ethnic groups, races, and classes mingle in the yearly celebration of Carnival. That blending of cultures is no small feat in a country as ethnically diverse as Brazil.

Brazilian dance is much more than just Carnival's feathered and sequined samba, however, and the 1996 biennial brought to light all its richness and variety. The festival, on a scale inconceivable in the U.S., presented twenty-nine dance companies @more than half of which had never before performed outside Brazil) and offered a wealth of additional attractions, including art and photography exhibits, films, carnival and tango balls, music performances, courses for the public in Brazilian dance and in tango, a colloquium on Latin dance, and an enormously successful Carnival-inspired parade.

Embracing the Brazilian spirit of bringing dance into everyone's life, Darmet created his own Carnival in Lyons. For one day in September, Fourviere hill in the center of town became Sugarloaf Mountain as 2,300 dancers from the racially-mixed suburbs of Lyons as well as the Brazilian samba school Imperatriz Leopoldinense paraded through the city. More than 200,000 of the traditionally reserved Lyonnais filled the streets to cheer on the dancers.

Just as the influx of Brazilians altered daily life in Lyons, some Brazilian companies had clearly been affected by previous visits to France. A European sensibility could be seen in Bach, Grupo Corpo's festival premiere. Unlike its colorful and sensual 7 ou 8 Pepos para um Ballet ("7 or 8 Pieces for a Ballet"), Bach traded image for sentiment as dancers in black spandex or gold lame biker shorts hung from, scampered up, and dropped out of a forest of silver poles suspended above the stage. This was a postmodern world full of violence and anguish, and the relentlessly fast pace was propelled by the dancers desperately flung arms and legs.

Bale da Cidade de Sao Paulo and Ballet Stagium, two of the Older, more established companies, ventured beyond their ballet roots with mixed results. In Bale da Cidade's Z [see Reviews international, April 1996, page 110] by French-Senegalese choreographer Germaine Acogny, the dancers undulated and twisted their bodies into the un-balletic positions of African dance with graceful enthusiasm, and many audience members shimmied out of the Opera House humming to themselves. Ballet Stagium's Kuarup, dedicated to the present-day condition of Brazil's indians, fell flat. Melodramatic staging and simplistic characterizations lessened the impact of the message, and the pervasive concept of noble savages seemed strangely dated.

In contrast to these established companies, small and emerging Brazilian troupes offered shorter, more informal performances. Compania Omstrab, led by choreographer Fernando Lee, performed a clever one-hour work in which the performers tap danced in flip-flop sandals on a rubber floor; pretended to shave each other with saws; stripped down, sudsed up, and doused each other with buckets of water; and concluded with an exploration of dance with towels. Compania Sera Que?, founded by Grupo Corpo dancer Rui Moreira, performed cabaret style. As the audience finished a hearty Brazilian dinner, the three-man company danced and played percussive music on a variety of household objects. Without abandoning his formal dance training, Moreira expressed the joy of the samba of his childhood, and the audience, charmed, danced and clapped along. Grupo Danca Pernambuco, a young company from Recife, performed folk dances with innocence and exuberance to an audience of appreciative school-children.

Two French residents with ties to Brazil offered intellectually interesting contributions. Marcia Barcellos, a Brazilian living in Paris, choreographed Signaux Transitoires ("Brief Signals"), a pop-culture spectacle that evoked past decades. Compagnie Azanie, led by French choreographer Fred Bendongue, explored third world development in Les Damnes de la Terre ("The Damned of the Earth"). Its movement was inspired by his studies of capoiera in Brazil.

The diversity of style and the level of performance from a country not world-renowned for dance was the most interesting discovery of the 1996 Lyons Biennial. Pervasive throughout the festival was the presence of African percussion, a testament to the influence of African culture in Brazil. As France and other nations worldwide struggle with immigration, the dance culture of Brazil provides an interesting example of how a gorgeous mosaic can breed a new social culture, the culture of the twenty-first century.