Dance Research NRW #52

How can artists become more empowered in a context that does not offer them support? How can they remain creative, spread messages of inclusion and acceptance and create a legacy?

Dancer and dance educator Frederico Mendes Teixeira from Essen will be travelling to Rio de Janeiro for his research "The Lennie Dale Scores - celebrating queerness and empowerment in Brazil", on the trail of a culture of empowerment in a problematic environment. It is inspired by the work of the Italian-American dancer, singer and performer Lennie Dale in south-east Brazil during a period of political unrest in the 1970s and 1980s. His research will consist of interviews, texts, videos and documentary films about Dale's life and work, as well as the interpretation and notation of his dance compositions in notation systems such as Laban kinetography. In particular, the traces of musicality, eroticism, queerness and messages of self-empowerment will be investigated.