Performative and dissident issues between samba schools and artistic cabarets in Rio de Janeiro: reflections from Talvez?

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on the process of artistic creation as a way of elaborating dissident gender performativities. For this, a cartography of the production process of Talvez?, an authorial artistic series formed by works in different languages, is elaborated. Firstly, the destructive and creative power present in samba and its activation in social and cultural spheres are discussed. Then, the construction of the carnival plot Testemunho de um eterno amante, the first act of the series in question, is analyzed and what it reverberates as a creation of gender performativity. Through an approach to the language of cabaret arising from contact with the audiovisual album Orgia, by Johnny Hooker, the affinities between the ways of mocking the body present in samba schools and artistic cabarets, especially in Rio de Janeiro, are discussed. Finally, it points out the importance of keeping active the transgressive power engendered in these territories and of practicing it in the construction of plural ways of being in the world.