The BODY-DRUM CROSSROADS IN THE TRAJECTORY OF MESTRA IARA’S AFRO-GAÚCHA DANCE

Abstract

This article presents part of the trajectory of the Gaúcha artist, Maria Iara Santos Deodoro (Mestra Iara), from the perspective of aesthetic-corporeal knowledge emerging from artistic-pedagogical practices developed in the last 48 years through teaching and creation in Black Dances, in a style named in the state Rio Grande do Sul as Afro-Gaúcha Dance. Starting from the concept of cultural motifs and the notion of odara, from the Nago aesthetics, we specifically expose the importance of the body-drum crossroads in the production of an art whose singular aesthetic, based on a collective ethics, is evoked from immersions in African memories safeguarded on the drumbeats of Southern Brazil. We also present the emergence of the Afro-Sul Music and Dance Group in Porto Alegre, founded in the context of the insurgencies of the Black Movement in the Performing Arts in the 1970s, having Mestra Iara as one of the founders. The reflection shows the context of Black Dances in the Southern Brazil, highlighting their corporeities, whose expressiveness emerges from the ancestral memories of African ancestry, mobilizing bodies through the rhythm of the drums from Southern of Brazil, a legacy of the Black diaspora in the Americas.