RIO DE JANEIRO — It all started with skillful leg movements, strong steps back and forth, to the rhythm of Brazilian funk music. He then adopted moves from break dancing, samba, capoeira, frevo, whatever was available.
Passinho, a style of dance created in the 2000s by children from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, was declared “intangible cultural heritage” in March by Rio state legislators, thus recognizing a cultural expression born in the vast area. labor. class neighborhoods.
The creators of passinho were small children with a lot of flexibility and no joint problems. They started trying out new moves at home and then showed them off at funk parties in their communities and, more importantly, shared them on the internet.
In the early days of social media, young people uploaded videos of their latest exploits to Orkut and YouTube, and the style began to spread to other favelas. A competitive scene was born and young people copied and learned from the best dancers, leading them to innovate more and strive to stay on top.
“Passinho in my life is the basis of everything I have,” dancer and choreographer Walcir de Oliveira, 23, said in an interview. “It’s where I get to make a living and I can show people my joy and let off steam, you understand? It’s where I feel happy, good.”
Brazilian producer Julio Ludemir helped capture this spirit and discover talent by organizing “batallas de passinho” in the early 2010s. At these events, young people took turns showing off their moves before a jury who selected the winners.
The “Out of Doors” festival at New York’s Lincoln Center hosted one such duel in 2014, giving American audiences a taste of the vigorous steps. Passinho crossed the borders of the favelas and disconnected from the funk parties that are often associated with crime. The dancers began appearing on mainstream television and gained attention during the opening ceremony of the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Ludemir describes the style as an expression of Brazilian “anthropophagy,” the modernist concept of cannibalizing elements from other cultures to produce something new.
“Passinho is a dance that absorbs references from all dances. “It is a crossover of cultural influences absorbed by children from the periphery as they connected with the world through social media in internet cafes,” she said.
Passinho was declared state heritage by the Rio legislative assembly through a law proposed by Rio state legislator Verónica Lima. It was approved unanimously and sanctioned on March 7. In a statement, Lima said it was important to help “decriminalize funk and the artistic expressions of young people” in the favelas.
Ludemir says the recognition of heritage will surely establish the first generation of passinho dancers as an inspiration for young people in the favelas.
Among them is Pablo Henrique Goncalves, a dancer known as Pablinho Fantático, who won a passinho battle in 2014 and then created a boy group called OZCrias, with four dancers born and raised like him in Rocinha, Rio’s largest favela. . The group earns money by performing at festivals, events, theaters and television shows, and they were grateful for the heritage recognition.
Another dance group is Passinho Carioca in the Penha favela complex, on the other side of the city. One of its directors, Nayara Costa, said in an interview that she came from a family where everyone was involved in drug trafficking. Passinho saved her from that fate and now uses it to help young people, as well as teaching anyone else interested in learning.
“Today I teach people who are around sixty years old; passinho is for everyone,” said Costa, 23. “Passinho, in the same way that it changed my life, is still going to change the lives of others.”
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