More than three decades after the Brazilian choreographer Deborah Colker launched her original dance company, the director has also become a reference for the visual arts in her country, Brazil, but also internationally, with a daring proposal with which has tried to revitalize and innovate contemporary dance in Latin America. Colker was one of the main dishes of the recent International Cervantino Festival, held in Guanajuato, with a show, Dogs without featherswhich captivated by its dazzling staging that included video, music and bodies smeared with a special powder and in ecstasy of movements.
“The gesture, the movement and the meaning of that movement is very important,” says a smiling Colker, excited to present in Mexico a work that has triumphed in theaters in France, Germany and New York. “We do classical ballet, we do contemporary dance, but we think about other techniques of the body, such as street dances, which are more mixed, such as capoeira or maracatú, techniques that seek to change gravity, which can create new experiences. We think, for example, what technique can help transform a body into water,” explains the choreographer about her way of working.
The show that closed the Cervantino is a perfect example. Almost two thousand spectators were able to witness at the State Auditorium, in Guanajuato, how dozens of dancers recreated the poem with dance. The dog without feathersby the poet João Cabral, inspired by the Capibaribe River, an extensive flow that runs more than 200 kilometers and in many parts looks dry, with cracked soil. Cabral speaks of that river as “thick in its landscape, where hunger spreads its battalions of secret and intimate ants.” It is an apparently inhospitable, hot space, scarce in vegetation, but where millions of people live together despite misery and scarcity. Colker took it up again and divided his show into four parts, inspired by the arid scenery of the State of Pernambuco, in the northeast of Brazil, one of the most depressed regions of the country. He traveled to the area, filmed sequences in black and white and created a choreography that in turn recreates a beautiful and tragic space.
He wanted, he says, to capture that river seen by the poet, but also those “people who live in that river, invisible, excluded, refugee people; “that lives in its own land, but at the same time is isolated.” For her it was important to capture “the tragedy and strength of this place, the cry of silence.” The result, Dogs without feathers, It is a staging that touches the limits of the body, which mix with the scenes of the Capibaribe, which move to the rhythm of its desolation. The dancers are made up with a clay that the company has brought from Brazil, to imply that the bodies emerge from the mud.
She tried, explains the director, “to show opposite points, an impressive cultural, human and geographical wealth, but the misery is also impressive, how these men steal what they don’t have, how they are forgotten and despite that they want to be in this place, this earth, in this sky, in this sun.” It is, therefore, also a call for attention. Colker’s work was on the verge of not being presented at the Cervantino, because the equipment to put on the show, including the special powders reminiscent of the dried mud of the Capibaribe, was detained at the Felipe Ángeles Airport customs by orders of the National Guard. After efforts by the Culture authorities, they were released and, although Colker had to suspend the premiere with the box office sold out, he gave three presentations at the festival.
Colker created his dance company more than three decades ago. In its country it has been classified as a daring and eccentric proposal and has achieved widespread applause from specialized critics. In 1995, the project achieved financial support from Petrobras, the large Brazilian oil company, which has given Colker sufficient economic independence to experiment and innovate. She herself has said that she wants to move away from the more commercial canons of the performing arts and thinks very carefully about her staging. A work can take three years of preparation. “It is a repertory company and we have three shows on stage and at the same time we are creating another. And it takes on average three years to put it together, because it takes a lot of work,” said João Elías, executive director of the dance company.
The company’s avant-garde proposal includes not only exploring the limits of the body, but also the combination of movement with space and finding a dialogue with the public. Audiovisual arts play an important role, because Colker is passionate about cinema. He has performed his works in more than 100 countries and has won awards such as the Laurence Olivier (2001) and the one awarded by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture (1997). “It is constant learning. We have to look for new techniques,” says the director, always smiling and apologizing for her “portuñol” during her stay at the Cervantino.
Now he is preparing a new work that is closely related to Mexico. An opera titled The last dream of Frida Kahlo and Diego Riverain which she “relives” the famous Mexican painter. It is commissioned by the Metropolitan of New York and will premiere in 2026. He says that he spent a year researching the lives of Khalo and Rivera, as well as the “philosophy” behind the Day of the Dead, the catrinas, and what they represent in Mexico. The music is by a Central American author who lives in the United States and the script by a Cuban artist.
In the work Kahlo is dead and Rivera is alive, but fed up with life. On the Day of the Dead he asks Kahlo to visit him, he calls her, but the painter does not want to return to this world where she suffered so much. A catrina convinces her to return. He tells him that he must meet again with his colors, his paintings, his loves. Kahlo accepts, visits Rivera, but when she arrives in the world of the living, the memory of Mexico, the fruits, the flowers, the color, the smell catch her. In the Blue House that the two artists share, there happen to be rules, among them that Kahlo cannot paint.
“She wants to and there comes a time when she breaks this rule and begins to paint and feels the past pains, with her accident, with polio, that physical pain, until Catrina demands that she return, but Frida hides and the dilemma begins between leave and stay,” says Colker. And yes, intrepid as the choreographer is, she also recreates the ending: Rivera dies in Kahlo’s arms at the end of the Day of the Dead and with Catrina as a witness. “What I try to do is look for the organic, the depth of Frida. She is an icon in the world, like Marilyn Monroe, and everyone knows her with her flowers, her clothes, but I have thought of presenting her in another way, with her diaries, with other inspirations, because that Frida and that Diego that the world knows, They are incredible, but I want to do something more intimate, personal, non-touristy.”