Atravessemos! - Portrait de la ville de São Paulo was created following a study trip to São Paulo in September 2022 by the Atelier danse performance of the Beaux-Arts de Paris, directed by Emmanuelle Huynh. She then invited visual artist Jocelyn Cottencin to continue the collaboration they had begun in 2016 around city portraits.
Nine students from the Beaux-Arts de Paris met with ten student artists from the Pontifical University of São Paulo to share their daily lives, memories, history and fiction.
The meeting took place at a time when Brazil was undergoing an extraordinary political upheaval, part of a general movement of withdrawal, nationalism and populism.
A journey through the gestures, movements and stories of a monster city, a river... 21 million inhabitants, covering more than 150,000 hectares. An urban expanse. An endless variation of greys. Communities. Fractures. Dances. Music.
This experience has produced and crystallised forms that are reactivated in the installation-performance presented at the Beaux-Arts de Paris.
Each performer will take on the role of his or her Brazilian partner, to bear witness to the relationship between space, memory and architecture, and to make the encounter visible through a cartography of shared experiences.
The notion of the border - whether symbolic, psychic, geographical or identity-based - will be the thread running through this fourth portrait of a city that powerfully conveys all the contradictions and tensions of Brazilian society.
Atravessemos!
