Artistic Director Márcia Treidler’s Danças dos Guerreiros (Dances of the Warriors) will bring master Brazilian artists together with her dynamic ensemble to share the traditional Brazilian art forms of capoeira, maculelê, and jongo. Unique to Brazil, these three folk dance and music forms are linked by their origin on slave plantations in Portuguese-colonized Brazil. Each is a distinct folk art with a unique cultural role and identity, yet they share undeniable similarities stemming from their historical origins in the daily lives of slaves and freed Africans in Brazil. Capoeira is a dynamic art form that developed through shared cultural customs, rituals, and fighting techniques. Slaves used capoeira to fight to escape and resist capture, but concealed its combative purpose through music, song, and dance. Capoeira today has evolved to be an internationally respected art of grace and strength that combines ritual, self-defense, acrobatics, and music in a rhythmic dialogue of the body, mind, and spirit. Maculelê is a traditional folk dance that was created on sugar cane plantations. The dance is practiced with sticks or machetes and the rhythmic movements imitate the chopping of sugar cane. Jongo is a dance whose footwork was created by slaves planting seeds with their feet. It is considered to be the father of samba and its music has influenced the formation of popular Brazilian music.

Danças dos Guerreiros will emphasize the shared African traditions that shape and define each of these traditional arts.