(Uno)occupy violence

the dances Let it burn (2017) and Lascivious (2018)

Abstract

This article analyzes Brazilian dance works that, through exaggerated proximity and distance from the audience, demonstrate how violence operates as a spatial and social practice. In Lasciva, Regina Parra and Bruno Levorin draw from portraits of hysterical patients at the Salpêtrière Hospital to create a choreography for two performers, in which they gradually shield themselves from the audience's gaze. In Deixa Arder, the accumulation and stacking of gestures referencing the docilization of the Black body result in an excessive, almost repulsive, proximity to the spectator. The article examines how these works subvert violent historical fragments, rejecting a purifying rewriting of the past and instead finding in it contradictory tools of agency. The attempt at extreme proximity to this past reveals its precarious and incomplete nature, manifested in the simplicity of scenic materials and in the choice of dance as a means of transmitting memory in a plural and involuntary way, exposing an ambiguous past where violence and survival are intertwined. Keywords: Proximity; Distance; Image; Performance.