Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T19:31:29.601Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Dancing Mestiçagem, Embodying Whiteness: Eros Volúsia's Bailado Brasileiro

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2020

Ana Paula Höfling
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article analyzes the processes of branqueamento (whitening) contained within the ideology of mestiçagem (racial miscegenation) through the work of Brazilian dancer, choreographer, and dance pedagogue Eros Volúsia (1914–2004) in the context of the establishment of the myth of racial democracy in early twentieth-century Brazil. I argue that Eros Volúsia not only embodied Brazil's allegedly harmonious racial mixture through her stylized “folk” dances, but her bailado brasileiro (Brazilian ballet) in fact choreographed Brazil's modernity and aspirations of whiteness. I compare Volúsia's prominent career as a performer and pedagogue in Brazil with her brief film career in the United States, where Volúsia had the opportunity to follow in Carmen Miranda's footsteps and become the next “Brazilian bombshell,” but instead chose to return to Brazil, where she was able to maintain her white privilege and her status as author and artist.

Keywords

authorshipbailado brasileiroballetBrazilfolklorenationalismracial democracyRio RitaEros Volúsiawhiteness
Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , August 2020 , pp. 59 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 Dance Studies Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Acerbi, Patricia. 2017. Street Occupations: Urban Vending in Rio de Janeiro, 1850–1925. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
A. M., 1943. “Teatro Municipal—Bailados. Inauguração da temporada official.” Jornal do Comércio, May 15, 5.Google Scholar
Bishop-Sanchez, Kathryn. 2016. Creating Carmen Miranda: Race, Camp, and Transnational Stardom. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.Google Scholar
“Brazil's Eros Volusia Does Negro Witch Dance.” 1941. Life Magazine, September 22, 57–58.Google Scholar
“Cinquentenário da Abolição.” 1938. Playbill. Rio de Janeiro: Teatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro.Google Scholar
Ferraz, Fernando Marques Camargo. 2012. “O fazer saber das danças Afro: investigando matrizes negras em movimento.” Master's thesis, Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP): São Paulo.Google Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 2001. “Closets Full of Dances: Modern Dance's Performance of Masculinity and Sexuality.” In Dancing Desires: Choreographing Sexualities On and Off Stage, edited by Desmond, Jane, 147–207. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 2010. “Choreographies and Choreographers.” In Worlding Dance, edited by Foster, Susan Leigh, 98–115. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Harrison, Paul. 1942. “Brazil's Fireball is Blazing over the Hollywood Productions.” San Jose News, January 6, 18.Google Scholar
Höfling, Ana Paula. 2016. “Pedagogy of the Possessed: Re-Thinking the Dancer-Researcher-Performer (BPI) Method in Dance Curricula in Brazil.” Brazilian Journal on Presence Studies 6 (2): 287–307.Google Scholar
“It's Easy but for Slang: Eros Volúsia Has Her Troubles with Idiomatic Phrases in English.” 1942. The Sunday Star (Washington, DC), May 17, E-2.Google Scholar
J. I. C., 1943. “O espetáculo inaugural de bailados no municipal.” Correio da Manhã, May 16, 27.Google Scholar
Katz, Helena. 1994. O Brasil descobre a dança descobre o Brasil. São Paulo: Dórea Books and Art.Google Scholar
Kraut, Anthea. 2008. Choreographing the Folk: The Dance Stagings of Zora Neale Hurston. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Kraut, Anthea. 2011. “White Womanhood, Property Rights, and The Campaign for Choreographic Copyright: Loïe Fuller's Serpentine Dance.” Dance Research Journal 43 (1): 3–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landes, Ruth. (1947) 1994. The City of Women. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Machado, Gilka. (1938) 1978. Poesias completas. Rio de Janeiro: Livraria Editora Cátedra.Google Scholar
Melgaço da Silva Júnior, Paulo. 2007. Mercedes Baptista: A criação da identidade negra na dança. Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Palmares.Google Scholar
Meyer, Sandra. 2012. “Modernity and Nationalism in Solo Dance in Brazil: The Bailado of Eros Volúsia and the Performance of Luiz de Abreu.” In On Stage Alone: Soloists and the Modern Dance Canon, edited by Gitelman, Claudia and Palfy, Barbara, 141–162. Gainesville: University of Florida Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Navarra, Ruben. 1943. “Crônica sobre os dois bailados brasileiros do último espetáculo da temporada oficial da prefeitura.” A Manhã, May 23, 5.Google Scholar
Nunes, Mario. 1943. “Teatro Municipal: inauguração da temporada de bailados.” Jornal do Brasil, May 16, 3.Google Scholar
Ovalle, Priscilla Peña. 2011. Dance and the Hollywood Latina: Race, Sex, and Stardom. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Pereira, Roberto. 2003. A Formação do Balé Brasileiro: Nacionalismo e Estilização. Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Getúlio Vargas.Google Scholar
Pereira, Roberto. 2004. Eros Volúsia: a criadora do bailado nacional. Rio de Janeiro: Relume Dumará.Google Scholar
Picart, Caroline Joan S. 2013. Critical Race Theory and Copyright in American Dance: Whiteness as Status Property. New York: Palgrave McMillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinho, Patricia de Santana. 2009. “White but Not Quite: Tones and Overtones of Whiteness in Brazil.” Small Axe 5 (29): 39–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radcliffe, E. B. 1942. “Out in Front: Rio Rita, Palace.” The Cincinnati Enquirer, May 8, 12.Google Scholar
“Rio Rita at Rialto.” 1942. The Post Star (Glen Falls, NY), April 27, 7.Google Scholar
“Rio Rita Has Abbott-Costello Team; Due at Fox Oakland.” 1942. Oakland Tribune, May 3, 24.Google Scholar
Roberts, Shari. 1993. “The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat: A Spectacle of Ethnicity.” Cinema Journal 32 (3): 3–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruyter, Nancy Lee. 2016. “La Meri: Purveyor of the Dancing Other.” In The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity, edited by Shay, Anthony and Sellers-Young, Barbara, 438–454. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sachs, Curt. 1937. World History of the Dance. Translated by Schönberg, Bessie. New York: Bonanza Books.Google Scholar
Scheuer, Philip K. 1941. “Town Called Hollywood.” The Los Angeles Times, December 7, 67.Google Scholar
Shaw, Lisa. 2011. “‘What Does the Baiana Have?’ Josephine Baker and the Performance of Afro-Brazilian Female Subjectivity on Stage.” English Language Notes 49 (1): 91–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silva, Soraia Maria. 2007. Poemadançando: Gilka Machado e Eros Volúsia. Brasília: Editora Universidade de Brasília.Google Scholar
Simon, S. Sylvan, dir. 1942. Rio Rita (DVD). Los Angeles: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.Google Scholar
Smith, Allen. 1941. “Eros Knows What She Wants: A Contract!” The Pittsburgh Press, November 26, 25.Google Scholar
Sucena, Eduardo. 1989. A dança teatral no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Cultura; Fundação Nacional de Artes Cênicas.Google Scholar
“Temporada Oficial.” 1943. Playbill. Rio de Janeiro: Teatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro.Google Scholar
Vicenzia, Ida. 1997. Dança no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Ministerio da Cultura; FUNARTE.Google Scholar
Volúsia, Eros. 1939. “Dansa brasileira: a creação do bailado brasileiro. Rio de Janeiro: Typographia Baptista de Souza.Google Scholar
Volúsia, Eros. 1948. “Aspects of Brazilian Ethnic Dance.” Translated by Bernardo Segall. Dance Magazine (June): 18–21.Google Scholar
Volúsia, Eros. 1983. Eu e a dança. Rio de Janeiro: Revista Continente Editorial Limitada.Google Scholar