‘Exaltation to the black people’: amazonian dancer performs in Salgueiro’s Front Commission

Ívina Garcia – Cenarium Magazine

MANAUS – Third school to perform on the first night of presentations of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Salgueiro brought the theme to the avenue the territories of resistance of the culture and black people of Rio de Janeiro: Praça XI, Gamboa and Santo Cristo, Little Africa, and the very Morro do Salgueiro. An Amazonian, newcomer to Sapucaí, participated in one of the highlights of the school’s parade: the Front Commission.

For six months in Rio de Janeiro, Amazonian dancer Ana Luiza Carneiro participated for the first time in the most famous Carnival in the world. “I’ve been here for six months and this is the best professional experience I’ve ever had in my life,” she says.

With five years of experience in the Manaus Carnival, Ana tells CENARIUM that she went to Rio de Janeiro when she found out about the audition for the Salgueiro Front Commission. “When I heard about the audition for the Salgueiro Front Commission, I decided to extend to try, and I got it.”

She tells that her passion for dance started very early, she went through jazz, belly dancing, and urban dances, when, at a certain moment, she had contact with samba and discovered a new passion.

Perfect Union

“Being part of a Front Commission is the perfect union of the dances and cultures that I love the most: the samba and the base of urban dances, which is afro. Still ecstatic with the presentation, the Amazonian says that the responsibility is very big, but that the work is developed by a huge team.

“It is a very serious job that can define a school’s position in the championship. The Front Commission in recent years is gaining more and more notoriety, it is a very high investment in choreography, costumes, effects, history, structure, so the dancer has to be very committed to the proposed work, it is very tiring and the dance is only what will be presented, but behind the scenes there is a very large team, “she explains.

As a black and resistant woman, the dancer says that participating in such a representative front commission brings out the ancestry of which she has always been proud.

“In samba we have a philosophy of understanding the past in order to understand the present and thus project the future; we have the right to rescue our history and fight so that we are not erased,” and concludes by saying that she is “increasingly involved and living with my people, it is very good to see yourself in other people, my cultural projects and my dancing are always in praise of black people.

Salgueiro’s Front Commission carried the name ‘Akikanju Ijó’, which means ‘Dance of the Heroes’ in Yoruba. During the colonization of the Yoruba people, one of the largest ethnic groups of the African continent and the ancestors of the Brazilian black people, thousands of bronze statues were stolen from the Kingdom of Benin, many still scattered to this day in museums in Europe and the USA.

The dancers represented the bronze heroes born in Brazil, such as Zumbi and Dandara dos Palmares, Abdias Nascimento, Aleijadinho, Anastácia, André Rebouças, Chica da Silva, Machado de Assis, João Cândido, Tia Ciata, Mercedes Baptista, Mariana Crioula, Ruth de Souza, Chico Rei, and Joaquina Lapinha, represented by Ana.

“Our ancestors who left their paths open in a ritual with the iaôs and celebrated the living legacy that is Ingrid Silva,” explains the dancer about the choreography performed by the dance corps.

More Amazonians in the Sambódromo

After almost two years without Carnaval, the lovers of this art come back to the avenue and get involved with the magic of Carnaval again. Adan Silva, from the state of Amazonas and a party lover, says that since he was a child he used to watch the Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo Carnival on TV and already felt his passion for the event growing.

He is part of the thousands of people who went to Rio de Janeiro to enjoy the Rio Carnival up close. “Seeing the parade happening normally made my eyes water and now I’m looking forward to the return of other festivals, like the bull in Parintins”.

He talks about the feeling of returning after almost two years. “The feeling was one of hope. The pandemic was a very difficult period for all of us, we were without the parades for a long time. When it returned this year, there was the postponement and the fear that a new variant would emerge that would be able to circumvent the vaccine.”

Fortunately, the party was not interrupted and, for him, this is the time to celebrate the lives that were not taken by Covid-19. “Joy, hope, gratitude for science, and a little sadness for those who loved the party as much as I did, but who terribly had their lives taken by Covid-19,” he adds.