Beyond Imaginaries of Brazil: Lia Rodrigues and the Body as Territory
Beyond Imaginaries of Brazil: Lia Rodrigues and the Body as Territory
NEWS ArticleLia Rodrigues Companhia de Danças arrives in Finland with Borda on 2–3 November. Brazilian dance artist Carolina Paulino, who lives and works in Europe, reflects on the multiple histories carried by the Brazilian body, and on how choreography can challenge boundaries, notions of belonging, and questions of who gets access to art.
As a Brazilian dance artist living and working in Europe, I often find myself reflecting on how Brazil is perceived from abroad. Samba, carnival, football, an extraordinary sense of rhythm, and a joy for celebration are familiar images. They are meaningful parts of our culture, rooted in a rich history, particularly in Afro-Brazilian cultural heritage. But they do not tell the whole story.
Brazil is a country of many voices, shaped by Indigenous traditions, the cultural heritage of the African diaspora, European colonialism, migration, and deep social inequality. Our artistic expressions carry these histories with them—sometimes visibly, sometimes in the ways we move, gather, celebrate, and resist. The body holds memories that words cannot always express.
This is one way of approaching the work of Lia Rodrigues, whose dance company, founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1990, has become a significant voice on the international contemporary dance scene. Rodrigues’s works do not seek to present a single, recognisable image of Brazil. Instead, they ask what bodies can reveal about vulnerability, imagination, power, and living together.
Since 2004, the company has been working in Maré, an extensive favela complex in Rio de Janeiro, in collaboration with the organisation Redes da Maré. This long-term partnership has helped make possible the establishment of Centro de Artes da Maré, an arts centre, and Escola Livre de Dança da Maré, a dance school. What matters is not only where dance takes place, but also who has the opportunity to participate in making and experiencing it. In a society where access to culture is unevenly distributed, this kind of commitment is both an artistic and a social act.
Maré should not be reduced to a symbol of hardship or treated merely as a backdrop for artistic activity. It is a place of knowledge, creativity, and everyday life, and part of an ongoing exchange between the dance company and its surroundings. Rodrigues’s practice invites us to reconsider the distance we often assume exists between contemporary art and the communities around it.
The Portuguese title of Borda refers both to an edge or boundary and to embroidery. Boundaries can separate, categorise, and exclude. Threads, meanwhile, can be joined, loosened, and woven into new forms. On stage, nine performers use movement and a variety of materials to create constantly shifting images of connection and difference. Rather than offering a linear narrative, the work invites audiences to experience these questions through bodies in motion.
What might this mean in Finland? The histories of Brazil and Finland are very different, and the inequalities in the two countries should not be directly equated. Nevertheless, questions of access to culture, migration, belonging, and whose voices are heard are also relevant in Finnish society. Rodrigues’s work creates space to explore these questions without assuming that one person’s experience can represent another’s.
For Finnish audiences, I would suggest setting aside expectations of a recognisably “Brazilian” dance vocabulary. Instead, pay attention to the relationships between the performers, the materials they shape, and the moments when an individual body becomes part of a collective image. The experience may be disorienting, playful, or gentle—sometimes all at once.
As a Brazilian artist, I value the possibility of this kind of encounter. Dance allows cultures to engage in a dialogue without having to become alike. Lia Rodrigues does not tell us what Brazil is. She invites us to imagine what we might build together, across the boundaries that shape our lives.
— Carolina Paulino, Brazilian dance artist, choreographer, and movement director
