Bruno Beltrao and Grupo de Rua’s “H3″. Photo by Anns V. Koiij.
The first thing my guest asked me upon leaving On the Boards last Thursday, after seeing Brazilian choreographer Bruno Beltrão‘s company Grupo de Rua, who are their first US tour with H3, was, “Did you respond to that more because you’re a man?”
It’s a fine question to ask. Not that women in the audience weren’t responding—you could almost hear the panting at the end, as eight physically ripped, sweating (and most shirtless to boot) Brazilian dancers took their bow—but Beltrão‘s H3 is an almost Mametian (in terms of its masculinity, rather than its misogyny) exploration of men interacting with men, from the opening moments, where a pair of dancers stare down the audience, to the closing moments of chaos, the dancers each taking more and more expressive and athletic poses on an increasingly darkened stage. In between, H3 offers a detailed examination of the way men establish themselves among their peers, compete with one another, and ultimately turn to machismo as a means to exist in the world.
H3 unfolds in three distinct sections. The first is essentially narrative, centering on one dancer’s character. As the show opens, he stands next to a far more self-assured counterpart, trying to follow his lead in staring down the audience. Then the weaker of the two begins to move, only to be shown up by his more assured and accomplished counterpart. Then, one by one, the other dancers move onto the stage, each in turn seeking to establish his own skills and ability. Ultimately, the original dancer finds a partner whose moves he carefully follows and thus is able to establish himself within the group.
The second section begins with the illumination of a long rope-tube of lighting that demarcates a large rectangular playing area on the stage. In ones, twos, and groups, the dancers move into the space to perform ever more complex and athletic movements, while outside the others stand around and patiently watch. The third and final section begins as the rectangle is torn up and cast off, allowing the space for movement to expand dramatically across the entire stage. The dancers become more independent, almost solipsistic, and the movement more radical, as though each dancer is trying to assert himself exclusively through physical prowess, but removed from the confines of the dance-space, outside his peer-group, it’s an independent and potentially futile act.
Beltrão is working with several distinct dance vocabularies that allow him to let meaning slip between them. Coming out of the club hip hop scene before studying choreography, in H3 he plays with contemporary movement, hip hop dance, and capoeira—the dance-cum-martial art developed in Brazil by Angolan slaves—in equal parts, letting him speak on multiple levels. The first section is both an abstract choreographic meditation on competitive male social structures as well as a story about a guy in a fairly concrete situation, trying to interact with his peers through hip hop. And when elements of capoeira are introduced—a swung first or a harsh shove—is it dance or pantomime, a new type of movement or a story of actual physical violence inflicted on a character?
There’s always a risk in interpretation—particularly of the product of another culture that you don’t know well—so I might be totally wrong, but I see the ambiguity as a purposeful act, a sign that as an artist, Beltrão is interested in playing with meaning on multiple levels. The polysemy of his choreographic vocabulary lets him have his cake and eat it, too, to use hip hop dance without abstracting it or turning it into merely a style, a pastiche, while at the same time questioning its hyper-masculinity, and, in H3‘s final segment, asking what comes of the order established among men on a dance floor (or, more likely, a sun-baked bit of concrete in Rio’s favelas) when they emerge into the broader world.
