GRUPO CORPO

Founded in 1975, Grupo Corpo has become the foremost contemporary Brazilian dance company. With moves borrowed from African, Portuguese, modern, ballet, and ballroom dance traditions, as well as from martial arts, Grupo Corpo brings a stunning diversity and technical mastery to work that is in turn cerebral, cosmopolitan, primitive, existential, and tough—while always remaining recognizably its own.

For its Vancouver debut Grupo Corpo will perform two pieces, Breu and Parabelo. A poetic translation of the violent times we live in, Grupo Corpo’s Breu, which debuted in 2007, features Artistic Director Rodrigo Pederneiras’ most radical dance movements in 30 years as the company’s choreographer. The gorgeous dancers collide, push, shake, rise and fall, barely surviving in a netherworld of aggression and alienation. Parabelo is Pederneiras at his most regional. Inspired by working and devotional chants and the memory of the rhythmic baião, the choreography that emerges is full of hip swaying, feet stamping expressions of Brazil.

“The fusion of light and darkness makes Breu an intense experience and the 40 minutes go by as fast as a lightning bolt.”—O Globo, Rio de Janiero

“A spicy, simmering stew of Brazil’s African, Arabic, and European influences.”—The Times, London