The Escola de Samba Portela likes to take literary plots to the Passarela do Samba on Marquês de Sapucaí, in the central region of Rio de Janeiro. For 2024, the theme is Um Defeito de Cor, name of the work of the writer Ana Maria Gonçalves, who received with enthusiasm the news of the choice of her book. Among the previous parades, in 1966 the blue and white went to the avenue with the plot Memoirs of a Militia Sergeant, inspired by a book by Manoel Antônio de Almeida. Two years later, he chose The Trunk of the Ipê, based on a novel by José de Alencar. In 1973, it was the turn of Pasárgada, the king’s friend, based on a poem by Manuel Bandeira; and in 1975 he performed with Macunaíma, hero of our people in the novel by Mário de Andrade. The story of the plot will unfold on the avenue through a letter dreamed up by the carnavalescos Antônio Gonzaga and André Rodrigues, in which the Bahian Luís Gama, lawyer, abolitionist, orator, journalist, writer and patron of the Abolition of Slavery in Brazil, directs his mother Kehinde, known in Brazil as Luísa Mahin, from whom he was separated as a child. Born to a free black ex-slave mother and a white father, Gama was sold into slavery at the age of ten, by his own father, who had accumulated debts. In the letter, Gama values the legacy his mother left, reported in the book. “Remembering the stories you told me, I am like a bird, as if flying, searching in my head for every place I’ve stepped, capable of being you in every encounter you’ve had over these long years. Even today, when I review your memories, I try to have the eyes of Dahomey, the eyes of Jeje, the eyes of an eagle (which was the favorite spirit of your mother’s mother)”, indicated the text of the synopsis. “Honoring those who came before is what I do. I am because you were, my mother”, punctuates the imagined letter. Proposal Next year’s plot was proposed by the carnival designers Antônio Gonzaga and André Rodrigues, who for the first time are at the head of the blue and white carnival in Oswaldo Cruz and Madureira, neighborhoods in the north of Rio. Gonzaga said that although they started working together a short time ago, the two already had the desire to develop a storyline based on the book. “The plot of Portela was born from within us and from our desire to talk about what unites us in art, samba and our heritage. We are two black artists making the centenary Portela. The choice of Um Defeito de Cor was exactly this meeting of trajectories. It is a plot that both of us already wanted to develop, but that we only discovered when we got together in Portela”, he told Agência Brasil. According to André Rodrigues, last year, when he was one of the Beija-Flor de Nilópolis carnival performers, he even presented a plot proposal based on the book and Antônio’s mother had already indicated to her son that the work would be a good theme of plot, “When we arrived together in Portela, hunger combined with the desire to eat. The two had a lot of desire to do this plot and we really dived in head first that this would be the best proposal for Portela’s current moment”, he commented to the report. Gonzaga also revealed that from the choice of theme based on the book, he and André thought of developing the plot with a cut, giving a more personal treatment to the story and thinking of a reunion between Gama and his mother. “We both took on the voice of Luís Gama honoring Kehinde as a way of also honoring our own mothers and the black women who generated our history of struggle. We talked a lot with Ana Maria and we are immersed in this narrative to make Portela fly high”, he said. The text of the presentation of the plot, or synopsis, published on the azul e branco website, indicates that for 2024, the school’s dream “is based on the main symbolic factor that gives consistency for it to be what it is and reach where it has come: Affection ”. And this is exactly what André thinks is the highlight, too, in the treatment given to the school. “We decided that affection would be Portela’s main word this year, it would be the common thread of everything we would do for Portela. A school that is completing 100 years needs affection, care, this maintenance of what really moves a samba school, which are the people. So we thought that affection would be the best thing”, he reported, also highlighting that the story is surrounded by affection in Kehinde’s trajectory, full of other women who showed him paths. For Gonzaga, the feeling that the two want to convey with the plot is pride. “Pride of where we came from, who we became and who we fought for. It’s a story of struggle and moments of deep pain, but the feeling we want to convey is really that pride and love that the son feels for his mother’s story. A mother who carried Africa in her chest and who helped build freedom for the black people in Brazil. That she went through what she went through and survived thanks to her love and attachment to her beliefs, her faith and her drive for justice and liberation,” he added. The two carnavalescos said that there is no division in the work, even though it is the first time they work together. According to Gonzaga, they already knew each other and respected each other as artists for a long time. “It’s very beautiful to live this moment next to André. I feel that we are at a very important moment for both of us and we are going to honor this beautiful opportunity to develop the Portela carnival. The work process has no exact division. We work discussing everything in the process. Each with their own technique. We add a lot to each other and this has resulted in a very rich carnival process. We are very careful that everything is exactly the way we both dreamed and with visual and discursive coherence ”, he summarized. “Everything is done by hand. What I draw goes to Antônio’s desk so he can see what he thinks and vice versa. There is no division of labor. Everything is done as if it were a single head and it has been very pleasant. He is a little younger in terms of the carnival experience, I am a little older than him, but it has been invigorating”, said André. The satisfaction of being at the head of Portela’s carnival is for both of them a feeling of great responsibility and the realization of a dream. “It is above all a great honor. It’s a big responsibility. I’m very aware of the size of Portela and the passion that moves its fans, its segments and its components. It is an enormous happiness to be part of Portela’s carnival and this happiness is fuel for our carnival dream. We want all of Portela to dream of us and for us to make this amazing story touch more and more people”, said Gonzaga. For André, commanding Portela’s plot for 2024 is, at this moment, also very reflective because it is a question of two young black carnavalescos at the head of the oldest samba school that completes its centenary this year.”It means a lot. It means, perhaps, the reunion of Portela itself with its main characters, who were black people”, he pointed out, adding that for them the principle is to maintain the essence of Portela as a samba school. “This work does not overlap with Portela. We don’t have that arrogance, that arrogance of thinking that our artistic production is greater than Portela’s”, he concluded. For the author Ana Maria Gonçalves, who defends the popularization of literature, given the reach of the audience and the repercussion of the parades of the samba schools in Rio, her objective will be achieved. The Um Defect of Color exhibition is also the theme of the exhibition of the same name at the Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), in Praça Mauá, the city’s port area, which can be seen until May 14. It brings an interpretation of the book, released 17 years ago and already considered a classic of Brazilian Afro-feminist literature. It is a “romantic real story”, explains the author in the introduction to the work, and brings the saga of Kehinde, a native of the Kingdom of Dahomey and kidnapped on the coast of what is now the Republic of Benin, at the age of six, and brought to Brazil as a slave in the early 19th century. The historiographical review of slavery addresses struggles, social and cultural contexts of the century, with 400 works such as drawings, paintings, videos, sculptures and installations by more than one hundred Brazilian and African artists, including unpublished works by Kwaku Ananse Kintê, Kika Carvalho, Antonio Oloxedê, Goya Lopes, produced especially for the exhibition.
Agência Brasil
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