Salvador and Recife

Helena Iara has had a hard time with the heat, here near the Equator.  Sleeping is hard, she rejects putting on clothes with even more vehemence than she does at home, and she even came down with a cold that seems to be associated with going in and out of air conditioning (100 degrees on the street, less than seventy in a bank... it isn't easy even for an adult).

The great thing about Brazil's northeast, however, is its culture, with more dance forms and musical genres and styles of painting and decoration than anyone could imagine.  And since Rita and I are making a movie with kids who rap, break-dance, and dance capoeira, she's gotten a lot of exposure to a new world.

Most people who have seen either capoeira or break-dance see them as spectacles, as amazing feats of acrobatics, but for the kids who do them here in Recife, the activity is much more profound.  Both serve as ways to transform conflict and to ritualize violence.  As one kid told us, breakdancing appeared when gangs were fighting on the streets, and some young artists proposed to turn the battles into an artistic competition, instead of a conflict ending in death.  The language of the break-battle remains the same as for war, but you can't touch the other, and victory is decided by competence, not blood.  Rita's doctoral dissertation followed this process of transforming violence into art.

The same is true of capoeira, maracatu, and many other artistic forms here in the northeast.  And for Helena, a little girl who loves drama and movement and acrobatics, it's been fun.