PUFF

Choreographer Alice Ripoll and dancer Hilrinho Fantástico have shared an award-winning creative partnership for seven years. Through collaborative works including Cria, Lavagam, and aCordo, both artists have remained deeply engaged with Brazilian dance: Alice uses contemporary movement to spotlight marginalised cultures, while Hilrinho, emerging from the favelas of Rio, became a pioneer of Passinho. Their solo show Puff, true to their catalogue, explores how disguise in African diasporan dance preserves silenced traditions.

Over 35 minutes, Hilrinho has the ambitious task to carry the ancestry of Brazillian dance, from Samba, through Capoeria, finishing with Passinho. His talent is undeniable, as he shapeshifts fluidly around the audience, who surround him like a square. Some moments he is frenetic, confronting, and heavy, the next light and elegant. We are fully immersed, lighting by Tomas Ribas illuminating the ripples of energy through each muscle.

It’s a very contemporary take, and it manifests more as performance art than dance, with music and sound being used sparingly throughout. Most of the display is in complete silence, bar the sounds of Hilrinhos impressive footwork and his occasional grunt of song.

Whilst this placed more attention on the movement itself, and landed the more serious themes, it took away colour, and history for me. The Passinho, the anchor of this piece, is so rooted in music. So much so, that the genre Baile Funk, associated with the favela free parties where it was birthed- was made illegal, it’s the genre it is today because of how the dance resisted its restriction.

Omitting it in this piece could definitely serve as a metaphor, a form of silencing in itself, but it feels at the expense of some joy. Other devices also hint at complicated themes, like the physical embodiment of ancestral grief, but they are as abstract as an echoed shout or a splatter of metallic paint dripping down Hilrinhos body. Without the post show Q&A, they are as easy to miss as a puff of smoke.