{"id":32435,"date":"2016-10-26T09:57:14","date_gmt":"2016-10-26T12:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=32435"},"modified":"2016-11-15T12:21:19","modified_gmt":"2016-11-15T15:21:19","slug":"ballet-manguinhos-empowerment-opportunities-and-community-pride-through-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=32435","title":{"rendered":"Ballet Manguinhos: Empowerment, Opportunities and Community Pride through Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

“You have never seen classical ballet like this…”\u00a0reads\u00a0the tagline for the Ballet Urbano Manguinhos (BUM) exhibition<\/a>, a multi-location photo exhibit\u00a0that launched on\u00a0September 23 at\u00a0Funda\u00e7\u00e3o Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz)<\/a>. The exhibition\u00a0features snapshots of the\u00a0dancers within their home community of Manguinhos<\/a>, in Rio de Janeiro’s North Zone<\/a>. The evocative images, captured by resident photographers\u00a0Eric Cardoso\u00a0and Ana Maria Silva,\u00a0prompt viewers to question preconceived notions of classical ballet and the Manguinhos favela.<\/p>\n

Ballet Manguinhos<\/a> began fours ago as a social project conceived\u00a0by Daiana Ferreira dos Santos de Oliveira. At the time, Ballet Manguinhos was just a twice weekly\u00a0free ballet class that Oliveira\u00a0taught in\u00a0a church in Manguinhos. It has since grown into a co-ed dance troupe of 200 students, with two formal dance companies (youth company and children’s company), five professional teachers and 20 supporters and sponsors.<\/p>\n

“We never would have thought that there could\u00a0even be a [ballet project]\u00a0this size in Manguinhos, because Manguinhos never had anything. If you were seeking news of Manguinhos, you would never see news of cultural work<\/a>, you would only see issues of [drug] war, militia<\/a>, and\u00a0trafficking<\/a>. But then, we are in a new time, Manguinhos is in a new time,” Oliveira said.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a><\/p>\n

Ballet Manguinhos has come to be recognized not only for their\u00a0success as a\u00a0social project, but for\u00a0the quality of their dancers who undergo a rigorous multi-disciplinary training in the Russian, or Vaganova method<\/a>. In\u00a0April 2016, Ballet Manguinhos became the first social project to perform at the Miguel Falabella Theater<\/a> in the Norte Shopping mall.<\/p>\n

Photographer Ana Maria Silva<\/a>, who grew up in and around\u00a0favelas in Rio de Janeiro, was instantly drawn to the project. She describes her first visit to Ballet Manguinhos as “love at first sight.”<\/p>\n

“There is no need to go to the South Zone<\/a> or to a tourist site to see something\u00a0beautiful. The exhibition is about ownership of a territory that needs and deserves to be seen, deserves investment and deserves to be recognized. And to show what is already being produced in Manguinhos, which is a form of change through art,” said Silva.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a><\/p>\n

Over the\u00a0past four years, Ballet Manguinhos has produced numerous success stories with dancers going on to professionalize at centers such as\u00a0Centro de Dan\u00e7a Rio<\/a>\u00a0and others joining the\u00a0Flamengo synchronized swim pre-team<\/a>,\u00a0who recruits actively from the dance group. For\u00a0Oliveira, it is dancers’ individual changes, both physical and psychological, that show\u00a0the biggest impact of the project. Chief among these is the dancers’ new found pride in calling Manguinhos home, documented with the\u00a0hashtag\u00a0#\u200eIssoAqui\u00c9BalletManguinhos<\/a>\u202c (#ThisHereIsBalletManguinhos) which the group uses to spread a message of community empowerment.<\/p>\n

The point, Oliveira says, is that Ballet Manguinhos is more than just dance. In August,\u00a0the group launched Dan\u00e7ando e Lendo (Dancing and Reading), a\u00a0literacy project that is\u00a0the inspiration for\u00a0this year’s\u00a0annual dance spectacle. The same month,\u00a0Ballet Manguinhos was\u00a0recognized as a\u00a0sustainable development initiative<\/a>\u00a0by the Rio+ Center.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a><\/p>\n

As the dancers prepare for their annual show\u00a0in December, Oliveira says they need the community’s support. The group, which relies on donations and sponsorship,\u00a0is currently struggling to provide pay for their five dance teachers, all of whom come from social projects themselves.<\/p>\n

“They are here with free will, with love, with desire, and basically what we need is to have the teachers’ pay guaranteed,” Oliveira said. “We can survive without doing the show, but we can’t survive without the teachers.“<\/span><\/p>\n

And after\u00a0four years without stopping, Oliveira\u00a0is determined to maintain\u00a0the project:\u00a0“So long as we have life, so long as we have the desire, we will continue. Mostly because the work has an effect.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To learn more about the Ballet Urbano Manguinhos exhibition\u00a0and view photos, visit the Facebook page<\/a>.\u00a0The exhibition\u00a0will be showing next at the Biblioteca Parque de Manguinhos from November 18 to 26.<\/p>\n

To make a contribution\u00a0to\u00a0Ballet Manguinhos, follow the link to their\u00a0Kickante crowdfunding page.<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas “You have never seen classical ballet like this…”\u00a0reads\u00a0the tagline for the Ballet Urbano Manguinhos (BUM) exhibition, a multi-location photo exhibit\u00a0that launched on\u00a0September 23 at\u00a0Funda\u00e7\u00e3o Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz). The exhibition\u00a0features snapshots of […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":33744,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1268,1503,329,1329],"tags":[1448,1361,396,2289,771,258,364,504,320,538,221,637,37,318,572,1403,259],"writer":[2130],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32435","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-favelaculture","8":"category-opportunities-to-support-favelas","9":"category-solutions","10":"category-by-international-observers","11":"tag-favelasareassets","12":"tag-endfavelastigma","13":"tag-art","14":"tag-ballet","15":"tag-community-pride","16":"tag-community-solution","17":"tag-community-based-organization-cbo","18":"tag-culture","19":"tag-dance","20":"tag-exhibition","21":"tag-favela-culture","22":"tag-manguinhos","23":"tag-north-zone","24":"tag-performing-arts","25":"tag-photography","26":"tag-solution","27":"tag-youth","28":"writer-sarah-cronin"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32435"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=32435"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=32435"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=32435"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=32435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}