Lia Rodrigues

After presenting Pororoca (2009), Piracema (2011) and Pindorama (2013), the Brazilian dancer and choreographer Lia Rodrigues returns to the Festival d’Automne à Paris with a new creation: Para que o céu nao caia (For the sky not to fall). One of her sources of inspiration in conjuring up the show was the unique testimony of Davi Kopenawa, a shaman belonging to the Yanomami people, an indigenous tribe from the heart of the Amazonian forest. In his work The Falling Sky, Bruce Albert gives a powerful first-person account of th life story and thought of Davi Kopenawa. The latter explains how his tribe has been confronted with a series of catastrophes, including a genocide. And how it has been obliged to reinvent its own sky. The echoes of this situation with what is going on in today’s world are all too apparent... democracies in danger, the rise in religious extremism and fundamentalism, to name but a few. Lia Rodrigues and her dancers also met with inhabitants of the Maré favela, one of the largest in the country, situated in the north of Rio. In fact, it was in these areas long overlooked by the state that the company set up its base. The artists gathered together testimonies from several inhabitants of this favela - children, mothers... This “raw material” combined with Lia Rorigues’s readings gave birth to the show. Developed in Brazil, Para que o céu nao caia was performed in Germany prior to being presented at Festival Montpelier Danse and then at the Festival d’Automne.