Lavagem

Using buckets, water, soap and lather, the dancers in “Lavagem” by Brazilian choreographer Alice Ripoll explore the action of cleaning and scrubbing as a theatrical gesture and a historical fact. The study of the notion of “cleanliness” gives Ripoll a new opportunity to dissect the polarised reality of Brazilian society where contact between different sections of the population remains extremely tenuous and where a sexist, anti-poor, and racist social order persists. Ripoll, who was born in Rio de Janeiro, is the founder and director of Cia REC. Growing up in favelas, the Brasilian term for slums, the dancers all have very personal relations to the subject. Their mothers and grandmothers worked as cleaners their whole lives, yet it didn’t stop the dominant, white upper class from considering black people dirty. The dancers exploit this ambivalence during the performance in order to produce images. The lather from the soap turns the black bodies white and the bubbles suggest a dreamlike world, yet by its very nature soap is also a source of frustration as it stops them from staying upright, forcing them apart or having to help one another to keep on their feet. The dancers attempt to establish a closer and more direct relationship with the audience in order to overturn social hierarchies and the established connections between what is happening on stage and the audience. In “Lavagem”, the questions are: What actually needs to be cleaned? The houses, the dirt in the rooms? Or the sophisticated strategies that aim to make some people become invisible? Alice Ripoll graduated from Angel Vianna's school and started working as a choreographer. Her shows have been performed in several festivals in Brazil and abroad, including Kampnagel Internationales Sommerfestival, Zurich Theater Spektakel, Rencontres Chorégraphiques Internationales de Saine-Saint-Denis, and Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels.