Art Happens

This study on “cleanliness” continues the research started in aCORdo. LAVAGEM shows again an analysis of the polarised social reality of Brazil, where contacts between the different layers of the population are increasingly scarce and a sexist, anti-social and racist social order is maintained. It is an investigation into the identities that are cornered in order to perform certain essential tasks in our society. What actually needs to be cleaned? The houses, the dirt in the rooms? The traces left behind, the historical facts? The odours of body fluids that we smell when we get close to each other?

The lather from the soap colour the bodies and allude to invisibility; bubbles suggest a world of dreams, which is in stark contrast to the severe lack of social mobility in the real world. The soap is also a source of frustration because of its typical characteristics: it prevents the dancers from standing up straight, pushes them apart or forces them to support each other. The dancers have a closer and more direct contact with the audience and in doing so, they overturn the classical relationship between stage and hall, so that the questions of social status, hierarchy and opportunity are asked very directly.