Things happen in Edinburgh. Ridiculous things (to which we’ll return). And amazing things. Border Bodies is one of the latter: 50 minutes of physical intensity from Brazil and the only dance number in the São Paulo showcase.
Corpos de Fronteira in Portuguese, it’s an incredibly affecting piece in our age of alienation. Eight bodies come alive on stage, isolated but full of restrained energy. They find each other, connect in ever more inventive ways, their vital energy less and less bound up by the limits of their own frames.
“We wanted to research something like our inner scream. Something that bothers you, something that you don’t like in the world … escaping through our skins,” says Igor Gasparini, creator of the piece. He’s sitting next to dancer Pasha Gorbachev (an “artist-creator” in company T.F. Cia de Dança’s terms), both remarkably composed for two men who were dripping in sweat not 15 minutes ago.
“The borders are not just literally the geographical borders, but our borders. So what separates us? How can we cross [those borders] and do things together?”
Key to the tone of Border Bodies is the melding together of a number of contemporary languages – voguing, body popping, hip hop – into a single aesthetic. Gasparini and Gorbachev talk enthusiastically about the way their experience and process enables them to draw together these diverse physical grammars. Part of that is born from experience. Gasparini founded the collective 24 years ago, prompting an impossible piece of maths in my head given his extraordinary vigour. Gorbachev joined in 2017, escaping the scourge of homophobia in his native Russia.
“We bring proposals to the rehearsals. Like, ‘Hey guys, can we try this? Can we try that?’” says Gasparini. “All of us teach each other,” he continues, nodding towards Gorbachev. “I am not participating in the vogue scene, but he is, and he can bring the ballroom scene to us and teach us some techniques.”
How’s Igor’s voguing, I ask. “He’s doing alright,” Gorbachev laughs, giving it full shade. “He’s just shy. They love my class.”
But it’s clear this is about more than technique. “One thing that’s important to us in our research is where everybody comes from, different backgrounds of dance, but also different ways of living and where people were born. So from the peripheries, the borders, Black people, women, LGBTQ. The difference can be collective. So how can we build something together?”
Gorbachev underlines the point. It is, he says, a “drastic difference culturally from Russia”.
And yet, there’s a history in Brazil that makes these themes all the more complex and relevant. Brazil was a colonised nation but also the last in the Americas to abolish a system of enslavement that existed indigenously long before bandeirantes planted their flags.
“Oh my god,” Gasparini starts. “In Brazil, I think we are kind of still learning what all of this means. In school I just learned the colonisation part, not the other side of the history. And now even the language is changing.”
Border Bodies has particular relevance for European audiences given our recent obsessions with immigration, but Gasparini describes a South American context where divisions are far more internal. “I’m Brazilian, but I’m white, so I have a lot of privileges. In general, people from the borders don’t have the same opportunities. And this is very gendered, very racial, very social, structured. It’s difficult to dismantle.”
Gorbachev brings a different lens to this. “There’s so many layers to borders, right? For us, when we were creating, it was about ‘if I can allow myself to be vulnerable and be the way I want to be, what would I address?’ And escaping Russia was like, I want to invest in that. I feel great in a crop top and heels. So I’m gonna do that, to cross my personal border to a place where I can be vulnerable.”
There’s a show-stopper moment I want to ask Gasparini about, when the dancers come together, crashing or oscillating together like waves. Visually it’s mesmerising. “That’s so cool that you mentioned the waves because we literally call this moment water on the stone – água na pedra,” says Gasparini, adding that hip-hop “bounce” is a core part of their research.
Let’s not beat around the bush here: São Paulo is huge. The biggest city in the Americas. The world’s most populous urban area outside of Asia. Edinburgh? Well, Edinburgh is not, and it still feels faintly unbelievable to me that it still holds that creative draw in a global arts movement.
“It works really different. Like we never performed [more than], what, three days in a row? When we were selected we thought we will perform maybe one, two times. And then it was like 18!” Gasparini gasps.
“And not just the amount of performances, but everything because it’s almost 4,000 performances in one month,” Gorbachev adds. “Also, we don’t have a lot of press and we don’t have a lot of critics. Used to be better, but now it’s just social media.”
Which brings us back to the ridiculous. I put the same question to Bruno Palma Fernandez, Relationship Manager for the showcase. “I can try to make this question get to our State Secretary for Culture. Would you be interested?” Well, of course I would!
So, to finish in the words of Marilia Marton, São Paulo State Secretary of Culture, Economy, and Creative Industries: “São Paulo impresses with its sheer scale, yet the true value of its cultural sector is measured by the reach of its showcase. The Fringe stands as a premier hub in the international performing arts market… Participating in the festival is not a matter of comparing city sizes; rather, it is a strategic choice regarding internationalisation and public policy for our state.
“The role of public administration is to build solid bridges, enabling our cultural output to engage on equal footing with the rest of the world.”
It’s a clear message of solidarity. On this occasion, though, I can’t help but feel the dancers put it better than the diplomats.
Border Bodies, Assembly @ Dance Base, until 30 Aug, 5.15pm