Being Giant, Being Whole, Being Present: A Collection of Voices from the Company of Mystérios e Novidades

 “What does the Company mean to you? What words would you use to characterize key turning points and mutual understandings?”

Dream, perfecting, magic, the other side of the curtain, in company, enchantment, attack…

The editors of Revista Mesa joined the directors, performers and collaborators of the Companhia de Mystérios e Novidades [Company of Mysteries and Novelties] at their rehearsal and performance space in Gamboa, Rio de Janeiro, in search of keywords and memories that might characterize the multiple meanings of the processions and street theater performed by the Company throughout its 45-year history.

The Companhia de Mystérios e Novidades develops public art and street theatre that engages with the power of ancestral knowledge and popular Brazilian traditions. Situated in the port region of Rio de Janeiro, once a major slave trade port and now increasingly threatened by advancing gentrification, the Company creates its processions and street performances as a form of activism in dialogue with popular cultural traditions and the city’s event calendar, bringing together organizations, community and cultural institutions, as well as spiritual leaders from different religious backgrounds, researchers, artists, educators and LGBTQIAP+, anti-racist and environmental activists.

As part of this case study, we organized a discussion circle and an experimental workshop with diverse members and collaborators of the Company as a way of activating narratives and memories. Walking and fabulating, each person followed a spiral path of a series of golden (isosceles) triangles drawn on the floor of the Company’s rehearsal space. We recorded the discussions and “spiral statements,” then transcribed, edited, and revised the material in collaboration with the participants which is what is presented here.

We talked about a state of suspension not only that of performers being on stilts, giant beings singing from above and embodying saints or orishas, but also the collective event itself where the everyday is momentarily suspended in a cloud of (en)chantment, dance, theater, tradition and joy. The street procession transforms into a kind of delirious urban presence, seemingly embodying what, in the late 1950s critic Mário Pedrosa¹ advocated as “a revolution of sensibility,” that is the only true revolution in contrast to those that are politically or ideologically motivated, a revolution that is fully welcomed and embraced by delighted spectators.

These processions are possibilities for social enchantment, to breathe collectively, even if only momentarily. A kind of therapeutic lung for the city. Breathing together, ancestral daydreams may come true.

Mila Costa
My name is Mila Costa and my word for the Company is dream.

I came here with a childhood dream of a much bigger opportunity, something that had already crossed my mind, but I had, at the time, no idea what it was, but it would be here that the dream would begin to materialize.

The first step was taken here. It was a giant step, a step on stilts. From that journey within the Company, I found other opportunities of artistic work, which was everything I had ever longed for, what I had dreamed of as a child playing games, something that was utopian in the eyes of most people around me, but which I believed in very truly. At the same time, I had no idea of how big this achievement would be. Today I feel fulfilled because after being here, I was able to go to other places, but the Company de Mystérios continues to be my axis, it’s where I always come back to. No matter what path I take, I know that I can be here and I can be in other places, living art, being art, and enacting a giant art on stilts, which is what I fell in love with and love the most. We are giants, but also, paradoxically, considering we loom so large from above on stilts, we have to be careful with the micro. The stilts in a way make us commensurate to what we are saying. Because what we take to the streets is very big.

It’s the love of my life to do theater, to do street theater and to do theater on stilts.

Carlos Santos
My name is Carlos Santos and my word is perfecting.

When I joined the Company, it was at the invitation of a friend to perfect the art of stilt walking, something that would be a way to hone what I already knew. Over time, I not only improved, but I learned something much more.

Street theater, dealing with the public, each character I played, each performance, in different ways, were big “novelties” to me. So, I learned as much about believing in myself, as I did about a trade, so to speak. It was not just perfecting a craft.  I started to believe I could do things that I had never imagined. So, that made me grow more. It made me learn not only as an artist, but also as a person. It made me a giant. Not only on wooden stilts, but in my being, in myself, believing in myself, understanding more and more who I am in this world, who I am in this place. So, here for me it’s great. I describe it as a great story, a great school of learning, of … I always say I am in search of myself. Here is where I find a more perfected self every day, and every day I learn a little bit more. So, it’s wonderful. That’s it.

It’s really funny, because watching Mila, this kind of hypnotized walking along the spiral line, was very beautiful. I think that nowadays one of the things that the Company itself taught me – because back then I was kind of a country bumpkin, you know? – is walking with my head held high and watching things happen, seeing, believing, as I said, in my own self. Understanding things and facing them head on is for me something new. When we start walking on stilts, we start walking like this [moves his head to look downwards], wanting to look at the ground to see where we step. As time goes by, Lígia [Veiga, artistic director] tells us this a lot, the stilts become an extension of your legs. It’s just an extension. And we end up getting used to it, which is sometimes funny. I say this more for myself, when I’m up there, I feel like a different person. Different. And then, when I come down, the feeling is so strange, because it seems like everything changes. It seems like I’m in another place, another environment, because we get so used to that view from up there. When we work in large groups and there are many people on stilts together, I don’t feel like I’m on high stilts. I feel like I’m here before you, as if I were here, at the same height, on the same level, you know? And then when we think it’s strange, we look at it and say, wow, a different view, it seems like we’re somewhere else. It’s a different view, right? It’s fun and we see that the people below us look at us in such a cool way. We transform things without even knowing we’re transforming them. And you’ll never know. It’s a mystery!

Lelena Anhaia_ Maria Helena Anhaia Mello
My name is Lelena and the word for me is magic.

I went to see a friend of mine dance and the show was called Saúde e o outro Missão Impossível [Health and the Other Mission Impossible]. For me, it was this impossible mission and health that captured my attention. The impossible mission of being healthy in the world, being happy, traveling, being able to be sensitive, and being able to believe in love. I saw all of that in that performance.

And then, four years later, I met the person who created that performance and I saw that she was a druid [describing Lígia Viega artistic director of the Company de Mystérios e Novidades]. I wanted to get close to this druid and I ended up getting involved in this theater of stilts. I loved it, because I liked that feeling of being on stilts.

I also liked to play drums. There were two Afro-Brazilian women that were part of the Company who played the drums really well and I learned several beats. So, I got closer to this musical language, then I got closer to the strings, I got closer to the angels, the clouds, the people, the wonder of being in contact with the people who are on the street, of expanding your sensibility, going outside and coming back inside. From there things continued… I tried to understand what was empty inside me, what was disconnected. Because the more you expand, the more you realize your disconnection.

Then I experienced various things in my life related to music: work, dance, instrument, show, stage, this kind of false world that is the stage. All made up, all dressed up so that everything works out. But on the street? It only works if you are within and fully yourself. If you are not fully yourself, there is no way. So, that’s why I don’t leave the Company, because here I have to be whole. And I have to evolve. I can’t stop. I can’t stop. So, I no longer walk on stilts and I no longer work in theater exactly, but I have evolved in the Company through music, which is my life. That’s it.

Here you need to be whole. You need to be whole.

Rafael Rodrigues
Rafael Rodrigues, my word is impact/mark.²

The first performance I saw by the company was called Ciclopes. I watched all of it. It was in Ouro Preto, there was a lot of fire, a lot of fire. People were crazy.  At the time, it impacted me but I didn’t know it had impacted me. The penny dropped just now because I was thinking a lot about what keeps me here at the Company. It’s a little to do with this thing that we can be who we are here. But also, I can’t do anything alone, it’s a problem I have or rather it can be seen as a problem. Here, it’s not like that, we do things as a group, as a lot of people working together and that moves me, it really moves me. In that video of Belo Amor [one of the Company’s performances] where you see Yemanjá [the goddess of the sea featured on stilts with a long flowing blue train], you see that everyone is there in that tide, everyone is there. You look at the faces, those on stilts and on the ground, everyone is transfixed. Total suspension, right? It was like we were all at sea with Yemanjá… it seems that everyone is floating there. It was exciting to have done this last performance, it was really incredible, because it seemed like everyone was transfixed.

I am a person who likes to draw, paint, write, dance, and to do theater. Here, I can play a little with all of this, be playful, present things, be a child again. I keep remembering, when I was a child, I believed in those things and I remember when I started to forget that I was playing, that it came to me like, oh, I’m playing.  When I came here in 2014, I saw that I was able to find via the paths that Lígia and the Company bring, that I was finding this way of how to believe, how to go back to believing in playing at being a child, going back to believing in playing, in embarking, in believing, in doing. How to make this happen? How can we do it?

It’s even nice to step on this here [talking about the spiral line made with coarse salt], because it brings me back to my childhood, the salt…playing, and drawing on the ground. It’s a little bit of what we can be here, be a child again… Kind of like undoing what has impacted us so we can find a way to be impacted again, right? Here we go on impacting, we re-encounter things and take them out, put them in, take them out and put them in, we re-encounter one another and go on impacting others, leaving that mark of impact and the things we encounter on ourselves.

Marília Felipe
My name is Marília Felipe. And my… a kind of …word… will be fear.

Fear of love. And… a little… dizziness. Vertigo. Sky. Turns, many turns.

Many turns, many turns. Many, many, many, many turns.

Much has been watered, many foundations laid… many Marias [referring to the Marias / Mother Mary and other women featured in Company performances] … a departure from one point to another and now that other point returns. It seems enigmatic, but it isn’t. Or is it?

A thing without time. A thing out of time.

A passion. Involvement… It’s accelerating a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot….

Ligia Veiga
My name is Lígia Veiga. I’m entering and leaving [referring to the spiral that she is walking backwards]. The word… The word is… In company.

In company. Discovering together, because that is the great wonder. Mysteries discovered at every moment, together, and in a complete state of suspension, memories in time, of the wise body, encounters that reveal, express, when time flows… I am reminded of my father who used to say “what exists always​ will remain.” He spoke of the love he felt for my mother.

I remember the path, the journeys, the encounters, and the wonder of what it is to make of life a work of art.  I am in a state of suspension… That’s how I discovered what I have to do.
How am I going to do it? What do I need to do? How am I going to grow? How am I going to become wise? How am I going to become wise? Start with the sun, the rest slowly comes.

Slowly it will happen. It’s a state of suspension. It’s a state of presence.

Elan Barreto
My name is Elan Barreto and my word is pelos de punta. It’s a Spanish word that I really like, it means goosebumps.

My first contact with the Company was with the performance Uirapuru at the Museu da República in 2015 at the Mimo Festival. It touched me deeply and I was enchanted by the entire cast and musicians. It awakened something in me and I thought, I’ll have to talk to Lígia at the end to see if they have any openings. So afterwards, we talked and she said: “Stay tuned, because there are open registrations for the Company every year.”

Then, I saw that they had an open call to be part of Abre-alas [the opening group of performers for a parade] for the parade of Escravos da Mauá [Slaves of Mauá active between 1992-2020)].³ I checked to see if I could on the days that they needed performers. My life is split between Ilha Grande and Rio. For 19 years I have been teaching science in public schools in the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Angra dos Reis. So, I was very happy that the days matched up exactly with those that I was available. I said: “Wow! Great.” On the first day I thought: “Will I be able to do it?” Because there wasn’t much time to prepare, only two months. The performers were very skilled and dexterous. I came to the first class and was enchanted by the wonderful Sara, Verônica, Dico and the other participants.

At the end I asked: “So, Lígia? Am I ready?” I had only been on stilts for two or three months. I had those backward jumps, forward jumps. Each class, each meeting was a very pleasant surprise, an achievement.  I also got to know the space here. This enchanted space. It really is enchanted. I gradually discovered enchantments and mysteries here. Then I stayed, stayed on as a collaborator, and I am still here today.

When I first came here, I was deeply moved, it really impacted me. Every detail of this wonderful rehearsal and performance space and home, caught my attention. I got goosebumps, right? “Pelos de punta.” It’s a Spanish word that I really like.

My first performance was at Escravos. It was like a preparation. Escravos de Mauá parade takes place a week before Carnival. It took hours to get ready. Hours to rehearse. It was a grind, right? But the debut was beautiful.

But as Lígia says: “you have to be present, riding your horse.” This state of presence is very important. Presence in that moment, that is, at all times, but “especially now” as we sing before beginning our processions and shows! The representation of entities/divinities demands great respect from the person representing them, as well as from the spectator.

Yuri Ramundo
I’m Yuri Ramundo. My word is research.

I think I’m the baby of the stilt family. I arrived at the Company via stilt-dance workshops. I had learned how to dance on stilts in carnival block parades. I was part of a group that was interested in performing on stilts in ways that would be more than just looking great and attracting attention, that there would be something conceptual involved.

Then, on the grapevine, I heard about the Companhia de Mystérios. So I said, I’m going to go and check it out, I’m going to take a class, get to know the place, get to know the people. I’m still getting to know it, actually. A group of people came along with me with the same concern that the stilt walkers of the carnival blocks could be something more than just a bunch of people who climb up on stilts, look good, and try to open up space in the parades.

Then the Company ended up finding me and I found the Company too. Here, I also found a space for continuous research. I think my desire to stay has to do with this possibility of continuity. Our work is collaborative. We meet all year long, we are always together, we see each other often. So, I think that, for me, it was perhaps one of the few spaces where I was able to continue my research and it is a research that never ends. We have several presentations and performance pieces, but we don’t have a single goal, like, let’s rehearse this here and then it’s over. So there is always a seed that is planted, grows, and dies, and is born again.

I think the first time I participated was in the procession of Ditirambo de São João, part of the winter June festivals and I think the first time I really contributed as part of the Company, I wasn’t even on stilts, it was on the ground. I played a sailor at one of the performances that took place at the Botanical Garden and at Parque Lage.

Everyone has spoken of enchantment. I had a very particular experience here, maybe two years ago, at the Ibejada festival [Afro-Brazilian traditional children’s festival on 27th of September]. I proposed to play an erê [in Afro-Brazilian culture erês are spirit children and intermediaries between initiates and the Orixás (Gods)]. I wanted to be an erê so I came with a pair of little stilts that were only 30-centimeters high. I was the shortest of everyone, so that was how I became an erê. I was really there, communicating between worlds. I was the erê itself, like that.

The experience was very intense, I would play at falling but I didn’t fall, you know. I remember that I was playacting, jumping over the fence of the Square with the children, on the ground, like that [shows how he was doing it], and I would continue to get up wanting to play again. After it was over and I got home, I was burning with fever, like 43 degrees, I was burning with fever. It was crazy, a fever that I don’t know where it came from. The next day I woke up and I was still feverish. I really “received” the spirit. It happened in the Square, at an Ibejada festival, on the day of São Cosme & Damião [Saints Cosmas and Damian].⁴ With São Cosme & Damião we went off to Encantaria de Terra e Mar [Enchantment of Earth and Sea, a performance of the Company honoring Afro-Brazilian heritage].

There are teachers and performers in the Company, but it might be interesting to note that I have an unlikely profession. I am an anesthesiologist. I work in the public health service. So, for me, I think being in the Company has been very important. It was what marked a turn toward researching art. Also, at the same time I entered the School of Fine Arts at UFRJ where I studied costume design which is of great importance here. The possibilities of research are inexhaustible. But I still work as an anesthesiologist!

For me, the Company is magical realism. It’s truly enchanting.

Ana Paula
My name is Ana Paula. My expression is: the other side of the curtain.

I have a degree in dance and psychomotor therapy. But I have made my living from art for over two decades. Over the years, I’ve been part of a few companies and I had the pleasure of performing with the Companhia de Mystérios e Novidades in Os Prazeres do Heitor [The Pleasures of Heitor (Heitor Prazeres (1898 – 1966 was an Afro-Brazilian composer, singer and painter)]. The piece was a fusion, full of pleasures! This was how I got to know the Company on stilts.

But I’m still a pedestrian, I don’t have the courage to get up on stilts. Being in the Company has been great for me. This shared experience in a group, it’s something I’ve mentioned to the group before and I’ll keep repeating. It’s this being together, this exchange. The Company brings me back to this kind of group experience that I’ve had in the past but I have not had for a while as I have been working on solo projects and on production. Even though I”ve only had contact with the Company a few times, these references and experiences make me believe I can go beyond what I call the curtain.

All of us have a curtain, I believe, that divides the self and reality. My self is very introspective, my reality is loose. Many times, I stay quiet, silent, and hardly speak. It is precisely to protect myself from this other side of the curtain. Here, no. The Company allows me to go beyond this curtain again, through the body, through experience. Having this experience, for me, is very enriching and, believe me, it is a pleasure for me to come here, to be in this experience.

I usually say that only my body expresses my feelings, thoughts and speech. Because it’s exactly like that. I have perspectives on things, but generally, when I want something, when I want to communicate, I do it through dance through my own dance movements that have been influenced by others: Rubens Barbot, Valéria Monã, Mayra Matar, and other masters that created their own language. Although I am not a solo performance dancer. I communicate through movement and dance much better than when I speak.

Going beyond these curtains is very difficult. It’s nice when you find yourself in a place where you can go beyond the curtain. Where there is no curtain. That is the other side, right? I see the Company as the other side of the curtain.

Cristina Basilio Thomas (Bolinha)
I’m Cristina, but everyone calls me Bolinha. My word is wholeness.

The first time I saw the Company was also at the Museu da República, at an event organized by Instituto TEAR honoring [the poet] Manoel de Barros.

It was a joy to see that. I heard the sound of the drums playing and when I looked back I saw the performers coming in with those giant skirts. It seemed like they were floating. At that moment, seeing those skirts in the air, hearing those drums, I went crazy! It was pure joy, contagious!

I learned to walk on stilts with Horácio Storani, an incredible clown. Then I took a workshop on stilt dancing with Conceição Carlos and Tainá Mecun, and they brought us to the Company to participate in the All Saints’ Day procession. I had only used stilts in classes and workshops. The first time I went out on the street was in the All Saints’ Day procession.

Entering this rehearsal and performance space has such an impact. Everything is so enchanting, Lígia’s tricycle, the banners, all those things, everyone putting on makeup… Even if I never had to get up on stilts. The people were very kind to me, they knew it was my first time. They helped me out of the rehearsal space onto the street and in walking toward the square. And that procession! Wow, what an emotion! It was quite a baptism!

And I have never left since. Every day I come here is a day out of time. Taking the dance workshops on stilts with Lígia and Marília, these incredible teachers, is a luxury! A gift.

Here, in this group, in this relationship, in this family, I feel whole. It’s really good. It seems like everyone speaks my language. And at the same time, it’s not a static thing, because we’re always changing, there’s always a new movement, a new smell, a sound… it’s a place to expand all the senses.

So, this is where I find myself. The experience here in this space/home is incredible. If I couldn’t come here anymore, I don’t know what would become of me [laughter].

There is a fullness. It’s incredible, you’re on stilts, but that doesn’t separate you from people, it brings you closer, there’s an immense connection with everyone who’s on the street. It’s enchanting. It’s poetic!

Iazana Guizzo
I am Iazana Guizzo. My word is enchantment.

I remember the first day I encountered the Company. It was in Tiradentes Square in the city center. I saw a kind of Brazilian Fellini on stilts and forgot what I was doing. I stopped. Then, cosmically, I went to pick up books from a friend and, again, I came across the Company. This happened in the same week and that’s when it all started. I saw the costumes of the Orixás, by Carlinhos [Carlos Veiga]. At the time, I wasn’t a macumbeira [religious practitioner of macumba mixing Afro-Brazilian, indigenous and Catholic practices] but I felt that there was a world to inhabit there, a world in those costumes, as if an architecture could be born from this encounter. I felt that very clearly. This possibility of doing things with nature, in a very raw way, because everything is nature. So that’s when this whole process began, that has to do with this enchantment, this work, with the journey, with learning, right up until I started to get closer to the Company during the pandemic. That’s when Floresta Cidade [Forest City an extension, teaching and research project of the School of Architecture and Urbanism at UFRJ] was born, right at that moment, it was a turning point. Something else began. Here, the possibility of practicing another type of urbanism begins, of perceiving the city from the perspective of its energies, its composition with the forest. Not in a spoken or formal way… I don’t know how to explain it. It’s something different from what the university and most professionals practice, but it’s present on the streets of Rio de Janeiro.

It’s as if there was another layer. Another layer opened up in the composition of the city where it would be possible to think about a city based on enchantment and how that might come about. Which is not just participation, bringing people together, and talking about practical issues, but it is an entire way of life that affirms a non-Western city, a politics and a poetics of inhabiting, a unique world. A world from which you never leave because there is a constant metamorphosis.

This has to do with the daily struggle of knocking on the door of the mayor and city council office. I’m learning that it’s very difficult, it’s a tough job, to keep things going, it’s very difficult. I’m trying to keep something going, I have learned a lot from the Company and this rehearsal/performance space. A lot. I realize how difficult it is, you know? It’s very difficult. Getting money in Brazil to practice enchantment is very difficult. I’m here living in this difficulty.

But besides that, something interesting has been happening to me when I participate in the processions. At first, I was kind of like the audience, a kind of funny audience. Later, I thought I had become a forest character, but I realize today that I was very disembodied, I’ll call it that. I was there, singing the songs, but still a bit removed. And suddenly, this year, something important happened, which was that I actually felt like a forest. Which I confuse a bit with the experiences of the terreiro [Afro-Brazilian territory of encounter and cultural traditions]. It’s as if I had a forest spirit inside me. Then I understood something else, very quickly, that the procession establishes a different energy in the city. Not that I didn’t understand it before, not that I didn’t know this in some way, but experiencing it makes you reach a different understanding. The procession, in fact, disputes the city, it breaks through the asphalt, it makes the forest emerge from the ground, from the past, from the future through our own bodies. The forest breaks through the asphalt because we are earth. It breaks through because the procession acts in different temporal dimensions, I feel that we know almost nothing about the power of a procession to act on this planet.

It goes far beyond what can be seen or its duration. It is not an image, it is not an idea, it is not just in that moment. It is an event. It is closer, perhaps, to what is called an ebó [a gift] in the terreiro. Provoking a practical energy with a few elements, intentions and people to the point of changing the course of things. It really is. The procession acts on invisible matter to change the visible. An ebó, a macumba, a dispute with the West, within the complex metropolis.

And this can be a path to building a house, a body, a landscape, a city. I feel part of this Company of Mysteries. I feel part of this world. Of this enchanted world that is also hard, at times, right? Cultivating an enchanted city requires persistence.

I’m feeling energized by a force right now. I need to hold on so I don’t collapse. This touches me deeply. Living is something very important to me. I’m discovering a way to live inside and outside of the processions and in company.

Cesar Oiticica Filho
I am Cesinha Oiticica and my word is attack.

Attack.

Cinema. Film as a project. To make a film about revolution. The stilts, I saw them for the first time on the street without knowing what was going on, then again, in the project for the film Ataque. It was the playwright Francisco Carlos who introduced me. I was completely enchanted because I was putting together a film project with him and wanted to do something different with the production process, something new, a way of not being this rigid thing of industrial cinema, of doing something that was political in the production process itself. That’s where the name of the project comes from, which has everything to do with it, and was also part of the screenplay featuring Zé Celso, Teatro Oficina [experimental Brazilian theatre director and his company]. So we put together this film project that is about theater in movement.

Here the Companhia de Mystérios e Novidades, this is theater in movement. On the street it is: Delírio Ambulatórium [art project of walking in the city streets by Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica in collaboration with the artist Lygia Pape, Cesinha is his nephew].  Delírium Ambulatórium really finds its multiple meanings in dialogue with the work of Hélio [Oiticica]. More than the artwork, the creative thought. Creating while walking, while interacting with the city. And then there was a cut. Pandemic, dystopia and death. Francisco died. In the middle of the pandemic. The project stopped. The theater, the movement, everything stopped. His death was very emotional. Very sad. He was gone. Buried. Buried or not buried? Cremated. I needed to be strong for my mother.

Then the return of life, new encounters. An encounter with this enchantment. And with the center [Municipal Hélio Oiticica Center for which Cesinha Oiticica is currently artistic director] with the work, with the street. And an encounter with love. Encountering a new phase of life, another film project was born about the Company, as well as a new production design for this film, for this project of revolution, but I think that the revolution is what is already happening here. The film, which is a fiction, is also as if it were a prophecy. We managed to defeat fascism! We defeated the pandemic. In another moment of joy, I began to reconnect with the street, resume this project, which has not yet fully come to fruition. I make films like those who really make life. Filming the same thing over and over again. This happened at Teatro Oficina and it happens here. The theater is getting closer and closer, even inside me, within this path, this film.

Everything mixes together. So, I think that what we are doing here together, bringing together art, activism, urbanism, the street, is already a revolution.

Now. That’s it. But it’s really hard to make a film about a revolution. It’s hard to get sponsorship. So, the interesting thing is that you take the film and have this idea of, kind of pushing reality. That happened a few times in the screenplay for this film. A lot of similar things happened later. I was even afraid to write after that. I want to hire a screenwriter for the rest.

But it’s about realizing that it’s in the here and now that we make a revolution. It’s in the doing that you’re already making a revolution. It’s not about instigating people to do it, but really revolutionizing all phases of making from production processes to the encounters with these theater companies. This was the idea because with that government, or rather misgovernment, it wasn’t possible to write this film, get sponsorship and do everything, so it was kind of a way of getting around the thing and doing a theater project, which was the theater of movement, which was also kind of prophetic. Francisco knew a lot about this because he came from Manaus and so on. Understanding processes as processes that are already revolutionary, I think all this also has a lot to do with what happens here. 

So, there are these encounters. I’ve been trying to reflect a lot on this revolution of sensibility, which is a text by Mário Pedrosa, from 1957. His disbelief in armed revolutions, a skeptical disbelief in relation to the French Revolution. In all these revolutions, in the end, the power regimes return with full force, they stabilize with full force.

Guilherme Vergara
So, my name is Guilherme, one of the co-editors of Revista Mesa. To get me started on this spiral I offer this phrase that comes from our interview with Marília Felipe of the Companhia de Mystérios e Novidades: now I can be who I am.

Who am I? I am walking, walking along a path that starts at Praça Mauá [Mauá Square] and ends at Praça da Harmonia [Harmony Square]. Walking in this city, between two squares, I encounter a cloud of enchanted people. Who are these people in the middle of the day in a city of stone and asphalt? These floating people, who are they? Who are they? Carrying the flag of peace, suspended on stilts, making siren calls using shells, singing, smiling, as the rest of the city with their hard, perplexed faces are contagiously transformed, and begin to follow this urban poetic procession-delirium? I found a matrix of urban enchantment. Now I know. Now I know, now I know that I am not alone in who I am.

This is the revolution, the revolution of Pedrosa’s sensibility as Cesinha emphasized, this revolution of the body-ground-heart that I believe in. And it is accelerating more and more, because you are seeing the whole world creating fabulous revolutions. The whole world is forming resistance groups like these, forming networks of communities to compensate for the failure of an oppressive capitalist system of sad individuals. The revolution of the heart and joy is urgent.

Perhaps we can see all the spiral statements here today, walking, just like Lígia, as readings of the Oracle of life. A prologue to this revolution. Because entering the spiral walking backwards, Lígia embodied this recovery of an intuitive state of transport to ancient times. It is as if she were walking along the spiral thread of her mission to radiate these forces, which today everyone repeats as ancestral forces, forces from ancient times. It is no coincidence that the Banner of Peace, the banner of all times, was given to the Company, to be a reminder of the future not yet conscious. Lígia’s spiral performance, walking backwards, rescues ancient times by finding keys that reveal these paths and destinies magnetized by so many lives in transformation. What exists as becomings will always remain. Journeys and encounters weave the curves of life dedicated to the origin and destiny of art. What a key!

From there on walking in the spiral, I discovered the ground. I discovered (now I know) that from the ground-Earth a force rises to the heart and when we walk and dance, the Earth joins in a circle. One can try to disobey a circle here or there, but even so, one walks joining steps, bodies, ground, and hearts. Circling and dancing go together. I believe that the revolution of sensibility is unfinished and infinite like a spiral. I believe in the revolution of love. I believe in the revolution of all arts. Now I know. Now I know what is inseparable: where there is dance, spirituality, body and heart, the infinite spiral of life is following its cosmic circle. 

The more I am, I find that we are. I quote Marília: “I can be who I am!” I add to that phrase to my listening of everyone’s spiraling journey, I think it’s worth emphasizing: Now I know that I can be who I am. Now we know. Gratitude.

Jessica Gogan
I’m Jessica Gogan, co-editor of Revista Mesa with Guilherme. My word is acorpar or better acuerpar in Spanish: concept/word of the Guatemalan feminist activist Lorena Cabnal. She makes a verb with the word “corpo” meaning “ body” as in “acorpar” literally to aggregate bodies, to be in solidarity, to be present, to bring bodies together.

Arriving at the Square it looks like there is a theater rehearsal: a few people walking around, rehearsing movements, playing music, it seems like everyone is waiting for something to happen.

Everything is colorful and lively, but there are not too many people. So you think, wow, will this happen? Will there be public? Will there be? And suddenly the magic begins with a siren shell call, a deep sound of the sea, calling people, marking the beginning and a small group of performers begin to spiral and walk. And then a kind of different energy emerges, a sensibility otherwise, joy. And in less than 100 meters, a crowd appears out of nowhere, like a cloud. From twenty or thirty people, there are now more than 300. This “acorpamento” – aggregating bodies – is so incredible. This energy of other kinds of revolutions, of sensibility, of community, of dreams and magic. You have to have faith. Start and people will come.

Thank you for being able to follow.

***

Ana Paula Dias
Actress, dancer, theater producer, and psychomotor therapist, Ana Paula Dias brings her vast experience with the body and art to developing a language of corporal expression in dance. She works as a cultural producer in the Santa Teresa complex, and also contributes to the Companhia dos Prazeres directed by Lucas Weglisnky, with whom she has worked on national cultural projects. She has also been part of works directed by André Luís Câmara and the Rubens Barbot de Teatro e Dança Company, where she is currently in the creative process of developing the solo show Além do tempo with her own choreographic compositions, inspired by the artistic trajectory of Rubens Barbot.

Carlos Santos
Carlos Santos is a circus artist trained by the Projeto talent da vez (2007). He was a teacher for Lumini Espaço (2010 – 2018) and member of the CODA KD dance company (2017-2018). Since 2010 he has participated in events and performances of the Grande Companhia Brasileira de Mystérios e Novidades and has been an official troupe member since 2023. 

Cesar Oiticica Filho
Artist, filmmaker and curator, Cesar Oiticia Filho has a degree in journalism. He directed the film Hélio Oiticica winning the Caligari and Fipresci Prizes at the Berlinale, the Rio Festival and FILAF in Perpignam, France. Together with Fernando Cocchiarale he curated the exhibition Hélio Oiticica: Museu é o Mundo (Museum is the World) 2010. He has worked as curator of the HO [Hélio Oiticica] Project since 1997 and as artistic director of the Hélio Oiticica Municipal Center since 2021. Together with Evandro Salles he started the parade event Parada 7 in 2022. He has participated in the Havana Biennial (2015) and the Biennial of Moving Image (2014). He has published books about Hélio Oiticica and Mário Pedrosa. His most recent exhibitions are: Quantum Spaces and Quantum Intervention held in 2024 and 2025.

Cristina Thomas
Born in 1964 into a large and loving family, she has six sisters who are also best friends; they grew up on the beach, playing, reading poetry, playing music, and having many adventures.

Mother of Pedro, a surfer passionate about nature, and grandmother of two incredible girls who love to hear stories.

She is an art educator, specialist in children’s and young people’s literature, a storyteller, stilt walker, and has worked as a teacher and reading mediator for over 40 years in school libraries in the city of Niterói.

She loves swimming in the sea, learning new things, dancing, traveling, being surrounded by children (of all ages) and poetry!

Iazana Guizzo
Iazana Guizzo is an architect and urban planner. She is the coordinator of the project Floresta Cidade [Forest City] an outreach, teaching and research project at the Department of Architecture (FAU) at UFRJ, where she is also a professor. She has a PhD in urban planning, a master’s degree in psychology and a degree in contemporary ballet. The regeneration of cities in the face of climate urgency, community participation, interspecific life and Afro-Amerindian cosmoperceptions are topics of her research interest. She works in the fields of architecture, urban planning, and art and has collaborated with Companhia de Mystérios e Novidades since 2020.

Lelena Anhaia_Maria Helena Anhaia Mello
Lelena has been a working musician since 1987. She has worked with the bands Luni, Scowa and Máfia and with the singers Rita Bennedito, Ceumar, and Vange Leonel. She is part of the group Orquídeas do Brasil of Itamar Assumpção, and also works with Anelis Assumpção. She also currently plays with Macalé, the group Banda Mirim, the Companhia de Mystérios e Novidades, the Circo Branco, and with the singer Natascha Falcão.

Ligia Veiga
Actress, musician, and dancer, she was a member of the Rio de Janeiro group Coringa Grupo de Dança and performed in the Italian street theater Teatro Pirata in the 1980s. She is the founder and director of the Grande Companhia Brasileira de Mystérios e Novidades (1981). Since 2007 the Company has been situated in the port area of Rio de Janeiro and engages with the region through shows, festivals, workshops, forums, parades, and activities throughout the city’s yearlong cultural calendar.  She created the Projeto Gigantes pela própria Natureza (Giant Project by Nature) – a traveling orchestra on stilts, consisting of practical and theoretical workshops that inaugurated the educational activities of the Casa de Mystérios and Praça da Harmonia.

Marilia Felippe
Marília Felippe is a performer of dance and theatre and a body educator with a degree in physical education from UFMG and in psychocorporal therapy from the Rio Abierto Foundation (School of Human Development) and trained in dance with Graciela Figueroa and Grupo Coringa. For 12 years (1988 to 2000), she directed the Coringa Rio Aberto, which was then a representative of the Rio Abierto Foundation (“para el dessarollo armonico del hombre” www.rio abierto.ar). She is a teaching instructor of the same system, which aims to contribute to human development through psychocorporal techniques where the movement of vital energy is the pillar and starting point for the development of work. For 25 years, she has been a member of the Grande Companhia Brasileira de Mystérios e Novidades, a theater and popular opera collective (www.ciademysterios.com ) and coordinates the activities of the Casa de Mystérios, a cultural facility located in the port area of Rio.

Milla Costa_ Camilla Almeida da Costa
Milla Costa is an actress. She trained at the Oficina Escola Nossa Senhora do Teatro (2016) and graduated in theater from UNESA (2018). She has been performing with the Grande Companhia Brasileira de Mysterios e Novidades since 2017. As a performer, she has also worked with the Companhia Atores de Oliveira (2016), Faz Assim Produções (2017) and Companhia Monkinoa (2021). She is also teaches theater at Oficina Escola Nossa Senhora do Teatro (2017-2018) and Instituto Entre o Céu e a Favela (2022-2024).

Rafael Rodrigues
Rafael Rodrigues is a visual arts educator and has been performing with the Grande Companhia Brasileira de Mysterios e Novidades since 2014 contributing to the processions and shows of the cultural calendar of the Companhia de Mysterios.

Yuri Ramundo
Yuri Ramundo is a 35-year-old artist from Rio de Janeiro. He has been performing with the Companhia Brasileira de Mysterios e Novidades for 2 years; he also works as a costume designer and art director, having worked in theater, opera and carnival. He also works in the field of medicine as a side occupation.

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¹ Mário Pedrosa, Arte e revolução. Jornal do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, April 16th, 1957.

² T.N. Marcar in português means both to mark and to be impacted by something.

³ https://www.escravosdamaua.com.br/

⁴ T.N. Saints Cosmas and Damian were twin brothers, physicians, and Christian martyrs. They are patron saints of medicine. In Brazil, due to a tradition rooted in syncreticism with Afro-Brazilian religious traditions, they are also known as protectors of children and linked to the giving of sweets, a festival celebrated in Brazil on September 26th.