Research Methods

In line with methodologies in dance ethnography (Buckland Reference Buckland2006; Crosby Reference Crosby1997; David Reference David, Harrop and Njaradi2013; Ness Reference Ness, Thomas and Ahmed2004; Sklar Reference Sklar, Dils and Albright1991) and with Diana Taylor's theory of archive and repertoire (Reference Taylor2003), archives and interviews informed interpretations of live frevo events and classes, and observation of performed and embodied cultural expressions filled in archival gaps that were missing in verbal and visual representations. Over six months of fieldwork starting in January 2018, I attended dance classes, pre-carnival and carnival parades, parties, markets, concerts, impromptu performances, lectures, and exhibitions in Recife and Olinda. I attended dance classes at the Paço do Frevo (a museum dedicated to frevo music and dance), Escola Municipal de Frevo (the only city-sponsored frevo dance school), capoeira school Escola de Capoeira Perna Pesada, and I danced with frevo groups Guerreiros do Passo in Recife and Brincantes das Ladeiras in Olinda. These classes provided opportunities to learn movements, techniques, and pedagogies from frevo, capoeira, and other regional popular dances. This research connects the “divided life” (Browning Reference Browning1995, x–xi) of intellectual and embodied interpretations of the moving body: theory is unraveled through experience and participant observation is a “dance of disorientation.” (Hahn Reference Hahn2001, Reference Hahn2007). I also conducted formal interviews with twelve frevo practitioners (dancers, musicians, students, teachers, choreographers, and scholars—many of whom take on many of these roles at once) about their participation and artistic motivations—as well as countless informal interviews.Footnote ⁵ For someone like myself from outside of the frevo community, who is not from Recife and not Brazilian, such “collaborative and dialogic” (Davida Reference Davida2011, 5) conversations, and what I call the “sweaty struggles” of such embodied research, exposed my own physical discomforts, cultural misses, and linguistic misunderstandings, prompting further self-reflection and better understanding of the frevo dance community.

What Is Frevo and Who Dances It?

During carnival, frevo dance (often referred to as o passo, or “the step”) is usually performed spontaneously on the streets, although it may also be choreographed and danced on stage in groups. When danced on stage, frevo is performed for local audiences or tourists and often brings into focus mainstream symbols of Pernambucan pride, with bright, sequined costumes and sombrinhas (small umbrellas) featuring the colors and symbols of the state flag.Footnote ⁶ The most commonly described categories are: passista de palco (stage dancer), passista de rua (street dancer), and folião (street reveler). These categories are not absolute or mutually exclusive, but passistas de palco are generally young professional dancers who perform choreographed dances on stage, passistas de rua are professionals or amateurs who perform choreographed or improvised dances (or a mix of the two) during carnival street parades, and foliões comprise a broad category of people who celebrate wildly in the streets and caem no passo (fall into the dance) when the orchestras start playing. Frevo groups range in size and visibility: some groups are independent while others are associated with the many agremiações (organized carnival associations) that perform in street parades in exchange for money or rehearsal space. All groups suffer from lack of support, to varying degrees, and, especially during the off-season outside of carnival, they struggle to garner assistance from city or state organizations, private companies, mass communication channels, and the public in general. As a result, all groups—from professional to amateur—see themselves as fighting to survive, and the idea of luta, or fight, is central to frevo dance discourse.

This article is primarily concerned with passistas de rua and foliões in Recife and Olinda who practice a more improvisational frevo style—whether they are professional or amateur, or train formally in a studio or practice individually at home or in the streets. The group Guerreiros do Passo (roughly translated as “Frevo Dance Warriors”) offers free classes to the public (all ages and abilities) and implements Nascimento do Passo's codified set of forty steps and exercises (see Albuquerque de Queiroz Reference Albuquerque de Queiroz2009 for details of his method). Within this method are built-in opportunities for students and teachers to express themselves—dancers are encouraged to play with creating new steps, sequences, and styles in solos at the end of class. The group sees his method as “atemporal” because it permits and encourages dancers to develop an individual style, such that the dance is constantly recreated and renewed (Albuquerque de Queiroz Reference Albuquerque de Queiroz2009). They fight to preserve the legacy of Nascimento do Passo and make frevo a year-round activity. Guerreiros do Passo also have a performance troupe that performs both on stage and in the streets and is known for its “traditional” representation of frevo with costumes, styles, and props that are inspired by the black-and-white photography of French photographers Pierre Verger and Marcel Gautherot from Recife's carnival in the 1940s (see Cassoli et al. Reference Cassoli, Falcão, Aguiar and Carbonnier2007). Members of Guerreiros fit into the category of passistas de rua and foliões because, although they perform professionally, many of them consider themselves to be foliões at heart.

The Olinda-based group Brincantes das Ladeiras (BDL; roughly translated as “Players of the Hills [of Olinda]”) is a group that is definitively comprised of foliões that was founded in 2009 by Wilson Aguiar, his wife Francis Souza, and a group of friends that began to meet regularly and hold free public classes using a communal and decentralized teaching structure. They started teaching because they wanted to keep frevo alive and resist its stagnation; they chose Olinda as their geographical base to preserve the city's distinct frevo and carnival traditions.Footnote ⁷ In classes with Brincantes, more seasoned dancers take turns teaching their “BDL method,” including elements of Nascimento do Passo's method and additional breathing and singing exercises, techniques from other regional popular dances (such as cavalo marinho, capoeira, and caboclinhos), and children's games (hula hoop, jump rope, hopscotch, etc.) that help students understand the carnivalesque and improvisational playfulness of frevo. Brincantes das Ladeiras is a group of foliões that resists too much professional organization—they have a WhatsApp (mobile phone communication) group through which they coordinate guerrilla-like raids on frevo street events, where they hijack the space in front of the orchestra and pull onlookers in to join them in a heap of dancers.

Among frevo practitioners that I spoke with, there was a clear concern for differentiating between more extended or vertical (“Westernized”) styles that are typical of passistas de palco, compared to the forward torso tilt and low center of gravity of passistas de rua or foliões that is typically associated with African-derived dances. Laércio Olímpio of Guerreiros do Passo explained that a passista de palco (stage dancer) is an “executionist” who trains in front of a mirror and dances to compete, to gain recognition, or to win a trophy, rarely turning their back to the audience. Passistas de rua and foliões, on the other hand, dance for themselves—they are “egocentric” in the sense that they dance “inward” and do not seek to prove anything. They look at the ground, as though they only want to see their own feet and have no concern for how others are dancing or if others see them. Laércio explained, “O frevo tem de ser orgânico, de dentro pra fora, e não de fora pra dentro” (“Frevo has to be organic, from inside out, not outside in”) (Olímpio Reference Olímpio2018; translation by author). When Laércio dances, his style is impressively elegant and controlled but it is not extroverted or showy. His overall energy is, indeed, inward and playful. He is a self-described folião and also an artist—someone who has clearly refined his dancing over many years of practice and reflection.

Not every folião has such an artistic sensibility, however, and the truth is that, on the streets of carnival, many people get drunk, show off, lose control, fall, or end up in a scuffle. Wilson Aguiar of Brincantes das Ladeiras takes a less philosophical perspective on Laércio's statement that the folião is egocentric, explaining that one must look at the ground because the cobblestone streets of Recife and Olinda are notoriously uneven and filled with holes—it is easy to twist one's ankle even while walking, let alone dancing frevo. Or someone might elbow you, trip you, or vomit near your foot, causing you to lose your flow and have to figure out a way back. Wilson's view on this is typical of his overall practicality with regard to frevo: he accepts the reality of the folião experience and he prepares himself and his students for it. The entire BDL method is centered on physical, mental, and emotional preparation to dance in sweaty and crowded streets, from respiratory exercises for maintaining hours of stamina to ankle stretches that loosen up the joints for the hole-filled hills.

Nowadays there are approximately equal numbers of male and female frevo dancers, but this was not always the case. In the past, frevo was extremely male dominated owing to the dance's roots in the hoodlums called capoeiras and also its association with the Brazilian Northeast's association with a popular culture icon, the rebellious bandit Lampião.Footnote ⁸ As dancer José “Ferreirinha” da Silva Irmão explained to me, “[O frevo] seguia a linha de Lampião: o homem macho, o homem nordestino.… O frevo é de macho, de homem de porrada, porque ele vem da capoeira” (“[Frevo] followed the line of Lampião: the macho man, the northeastern man.… Frevo comes from the macho, from the fighting man, because it comes from capoeira”) (Da Silva Irmão Reference Da Silva Irmão2018; translation by author). In Valdemar de Oliveira's writings about frevo dance's origins in capoeira, he claims that, unlike samba, frevo is not a feminine dance, but rather a “macho” dance that exemplifies the muscular physique of the capoeira and the bravery of the Pernambucan man (Reference De Oliveira1985, 122). It became more acceptable for women to participate in frevo after middle-class blocos formed in the early decades of the twentieth century and hosted their activities in private spaces, away from violent streets (Dantas Silva Reference Dantas Silva2000). Today, women participate freely in street carnival, but they often dance in what might be described as a “masculine” style—for example, Lucélia Albuquerque de Queiroz of Guerreiros do Passo described her own movement style as more “brutish” or “crude” and less “feminine,” “pretty,” or “graceful” (Albuquerque de Queiroz and Araújo Reference Albuquerque de Queiroz and Araújo2018).Footnote ⁹

Frevo and Capoeira

This section considers frevo's origins in capoeira and draws comparisons between the two to frame an examination of their shared strategies of resistance. According to the often-cited narrative of Valdemar de Oliveira, the originators of frevo dance were late nineteenth-century capoeiras, or fighters that used techniques from the martial art of capoeira (Reference De Oliveira1985). Capoeira is a Brazilian martial art dating back to the sixteenth century that is most commonly described as a “fight disguised as a dance,” developed by African slaves to provide physical and mental training for rebellion against slave masters (Lewis Reference Lewis1992; Talmon-Chvaicer Reference Talmon-Chvaicer2008). It is important to remember that capoeira—having undergone its own legitimization, nationalization, and patrimonialization processes—looks very different today than it did in the late 1800s, and capoeira in Pernambuco at that time was also distinct from capoeira in Bahia, the northeastern Brazilian state with which it is most associated (Da Rocha Mulatinho Reference Da Rocha Mulatinho2018). Capoeira fighters in late nineteenth-century Recife were described as valentões and brabos, or strong “masculine” bullies and tough guys, who were not considered to be trained capoeirista martial artists as they are today, but rather vagabonds and gangsters.Footnote ¹⁰ These capoeiras were hired by military bands to protect them against rival groups, and encounters between the groups often turned violent. As capoeira became increasingly policed and even, at one time, prohibited by law throughout Brazil (from 1890 until around 1920) for its association with violence and vagrancy,Footnote ¹¹ the ostensibly lighthearted frevo dance developed as a means of disguising such aggressive fighting (De Oliveira Reference De Oliveira1985, 57–118). This is interesting because capoeira today is described as a martial art disguised as a dance and, by the logic of that narrative, frevo would have developed as a disguise of that disguise. In capoeira, “conformity is appearance; resistance is what is actually going on” (Merrell Reference Merrell2005, 23) and deception is at its philosophical core. Thus, as detailed in this article, multiple levels of such “hidden transcripts” (Scott Reference Scott1990, 136–56), or concealed strategies of resistance by subordinate groups, also played a role in the development of frevo out of capoeira at the turn of the twentieth century.

Frevo today apparently has very little in common with capoeira, which is a “game” between two players and involves a combination of cooperation, strategy, cunning, and trickery. Frevo, on the other hand, is primarily seen as a virtuosic and acrobatic solo dance. Frevo is also largely associated with carnival, whereas capoeira—though carnivalesque in many ways—is not typically a carnival dance. On the surface, frevo appears joyful, colorful, and always smiling, but, upon deeper inspection, it also contains a certain grit and tenacity. Dance scholar Valéria Vicente identifies some similarities between the “corporeal preparation” involved in capoeira Angola Footnote ¹² and frevo (Reference Vicente2009, 48–51), and Cristina Rosa also describes how a certain ginga aesthetic—characterized by a swing of the body, playfulness, and polycentric and polyrhythmic patterns of movement—connects capoeira, frevo, and samba, among other Afro-Brazilian dances (Reference Rosa2015). The styles that are taught by groups such as Guerreiros do Passo and Brincantes das Ladeiras emphasize a bouncing, swinging, and hunching of the shoulders, with a slight forward tilt of the torso and low center of gravity. In line with Vicente's and Rosa's analyses, this style feels, to me, more like the playful ginga swing of capoeira Angola than other more “vertical” and “stretched” styles of passistas de palco, or stage dancers.

One common element of frevo and capoeira is the roda, a circle that is formed by practitioners in which they take turns performing. The roda is a crucial and sacred part of capoeira that involves two players playing the game in the center, a bateria or group of musicians at the top of the roda, and other capoeiristas singing and clapping around the perimeter of the circle (Almeida Reference Almeida1986; Capoeira Reference Capoeira2002). In capoeira, movements are governed by a series of actions and reactions between two opponents. If one kicks a queixada, the other will duck into an esquiva escape, but may quickly respond to the attack by catching their opponent in a vingativa that pushes them off-balance—and so continues the game until one of them gets “got” and the game starts again, ad infinitum, until someone else “buys” the game or one player decides to bow out. (There is no winner in capoeira.) Frevo rodas are less ritualistic and are not indispensable elements of the dance—during street parades, small rodas are spontaneously formed in front of orchestras by foliões and one dancer enters at a time, in a spatial configuration loosely similar to capoeira's bateria/roda structure, but with a more playful than competitive purpose. Rodas are also used at the end of some frevo classes to give students an opportunity to improvise a solo. Solos in a frevo roda may serve several different purposes, from personal satisfaction to showing off, letting off steam, or celebrating with friends. In an organized roda after a class, the dancer usually has total freedom to dance as they please; in rodas created in the middle of the street during carnival, the sequence of movements is generally free but may also be determined by the present situation—a hole in the street, a person bumping into you, or the music taking an unexpected turn that demands a particular step or energy.

Frevo today appears to be more welcoming to female practitioners than capoeira. Although many women practice capoeira throughout the world today (as capoeira has successfully globalized), Owen and De Martini Ugolotti (Reference Owen and De Martini Ugolotti2017) propose that men continue to dominate the roda and resort to demeaning practices that make gender inclusivity in capoeira a challenge.Footnote ¹³ As these researchers explain, capoeira narratives are often read as counter-narratives of resistance for marginalized or subaltern groups, but these stories are usually told by and feature men, promoting masculine qualities such as “rebellion, competitiveness, risk-taking, [and] violence” (Owen and De Martini Ugolotti Reference Owen and De Martini Ugolotti2017, 12). Frevo takes on some of this cultural narrative but it also opens up more possibilities for resisting such heteronormative definitions because of its emphasis on individuality over interaction between two opponents and because of its distinct approach to “play,” as described in the next section.

Frevo and capoeira share a key element: the idea of working toward freedom of expression through the practice of improvisation, in which the process—not the product—is the goal. Frevo and capoeira rodas today serve different purposes but these examples demonstrate the parallels between the ways that improvisational strategies are used in each. Capoeira is “always becoming something other than what it was becoming” (Merrell Reference Merrell2005, 274), meaning that it is always transforming and resisting what it was before, or what it was predicted to become. By this definition, frevo could be described as one more iteration of the capoeira ideology, carrying on its philosophy of uncertainty and deception as a disguise of a disguise. The history of frevo's origins in capoeira suggest that the distinction between the two was not always so clear, and early twentieth-century carnival dancing in Recife likely looked a lot like a series of actions and reactions using kicks, leaps, and squats that were not yet defined as belonging to genres called frevo or capoeira. They were, according to the narrative described to me by frevo teachers such as Otávio Bastos, Wilson Aguiar, and Júnior Viégas, movements performed by capoeira fighters that served as an aggressive fighting technique when the police were not looking, but a harmless solo improvisational dance form when the police appeared. As Otávio Bastos explained in one class, two rival capoeiras would be elbowing and kicking at each other, but when the police appeared, they would separate, and that elbowing would become what is now known as abre alas, a movement that mimics a clearing of the space using the elbows and forearms, and the kicking would become chutando de frente, a lighthearted kick to the front. In this way, they could continue practicing the movements without being punished for involvement in a prohibited activity. Such stories illustrate how people today talk about frevo and capoeira in similar ways: as nonlinear, carnivalesque, and improvisational processes of becoming and self-liberation.

Play and Carnivalesque

Frevo is a playful and improvisational dance that arises out of Recife's urban, crowded, and often violent street carnival. Anthropologist Daniel Linger describes the tensions between celebration and violence during Brazilian carnival as a “cultural cluster” that distinguishes between desabafos, or harmless acts of venting, and briga, or real threats and provocation. He says, “Carnival must play with violence but discourage revelers from crossing the boundary into briga—a delicate operation” (Reference Linger1992, 16). I argue that frevo's emphasis on brincadeira, or play, addresses the liminal space between these extremes. Huizinga defines play as “a free activity standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life as being ‘not serious,’ but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly” (Reference Huizinga, Salen and Zimmerman2006, 107). That is, play is a liminal activity that includes both serious and nonserious aspects and provides an escape from real life (except when it doesn't).

In the context of carnival in Brazil's northeastern state of Maranhão, Linger explains how “festive violence” is a central aspect of street carnivals, walking the line between ritualized aggression and real aggression (Reference Linger1992, 43–73), which also aptly describes the unpredictability of Recife's frevo carnival. Both frevo and capoeira are generally playful, but they are also both physically and mentally demanding and can easily slip into violence—I have witnessed a friendly capoeira game become overtly aggressive and combative, just as I have witnessed carnival revelers quickly shift from happily brincando no passo to brigando, or fighting, and lunging at each other in the streets. Ferreirinha explained to me that “‘jogar’ é a dúvida entre luta e dança” (“‘jogar’ [playing] is the uncertainty between fight and dance”) (Da Silva Irmão Reference Da Silva Irmão2018; translation by author), indicating that this notion of play points to the liminal space between the seriousness and playfulness that is at the heart of carnival.

In Brazilian Portuguese, the words jogar and brincar both mean “to play,” but they have slightly different connotations that help explain the difference between how frevo and capoeira are “played.” In capoeira, two players or opponents jogam (play) the game in the center of the roda and they generally (though not always) abide by certain rules and etiquette (Downey Reference Downey2005; Merrell Reference Merrell2005).Footnote ¹⁴ Frevo, on the other hand, is a brincadeira that is more about having fun in the streets (drinking, dancing, flirting, pranking, or being mischievous) than about engaging in a ritualized game or competition between two people. By this definition, jogar is more similar to sociologist Roger Caillois's notion of ludic agon, or competition, and brincar aligns with paidia, or less structured child's play (Reference Caillois and Barash2001). I propose that jogar in the game of capoeira generally maintains a binary construction between two “sides” or “opponents,” whereas brincar in frevo allows for a disruption of discrete social boundaries.

The in-betweenness of play is made apparent during carnival's “dynamic, many-levelled, liminal domain of multiframed anti-structures and spontaneous communitas” (Turner Reference Turner1986, 124). Students of Guerreiros do Passo and Brincantes das Ladeiras are trained to brincar in uncertain situations—for example, they do not practice in front of a mirror but instead they train their three-dimensional awareness without an obvious “front” that prepares them to always be aware of their surroundings. In this way, they are prepared to play within carnival's unpredictable chaos while also feeling a sense of communitas and sharing o binário, or the binary bass rhythm of the music, as they bounce with the crowd (see Photo 1).

Photo 1. José “Ferreirinha” da Silva Irmão dances frevo and exhibits the playful energy of a folião during Baile da Macuca, a pre-carnival street parade organized by a bloco called Boi da Macuca. Olinda, January 8, 2016. Photograph by Kelvin Andrade, reproduced by permission of Kelvin Andrade.

I observe that, as a dance, frevo does not so much represent the upheaval of symbolic power hierarchies represented by Recife's carnival as it does improvise a laughing (and sometimes mocking) dance around them to test their boundaries. Foliões are prepared for the carnivalesque, which Bakhtin (Reference Bakhtin and Iswolsky1984) describes as eccentric, crowded, grotesque, physical, degrading, and cunning. There has already been much scholarly discussion of capoeira as a carnivalesque inversion of power hierarchies that enacts the narrative of African slave resistance in Brazil (Downey Reference Downey2005; Merrell Reference Merrell2005; Talmon-Chvaicer Reference Talmon-Chvaicer2008), and Barbara Browning specifically points to the parallels between narratives of hierarchical inversion (slave/master, black/white, African/European, female/male) and the tendency for capoeiristas to turn upside down into headstands, handstands, or aús (cartwheels) (Reference Browning1995, 86–96). Frevo, on the other hand, rarely goes upside down, and Wilson Aguiar (a trained capoeirista and passista de rua, and self-described folião) explained that, for him, the training approaches involved in capoeira and frevo are completely antagonistic: in capoeira, you must accept and train for the inevitability that your opponent will make you fall, whereas in frevo, you must train to always stay balanced in the crowded and unpredictable streets of carnival (Aguiar Reference Aguiar2018). I think that Wilson makes a keen distinction, but I would also argue that these are two sides of the same coin. If you must train to stay balanced, there must also exist the possibility of falling. In fact, Wilson's signature move is a deadpan forward free fall from standing, in which he catches himself with his hands in a low plank position just before his face would hit the ground, popping back up with a big grin on his face amidst the crowd's appreciative hollers. In practice, frevo embodies Bakhtin's notion of carnivalesque laughter as it mocks the social boundaries that are disrupted during carnival.

Improvisation and Munganga

Improvisation is a key point that pervaded my study of frevo dance in Recife. In the context of frevo, the word “improvisation” takes on a distinct and, at times, contested meaning. In Brazilian Portuguese, the noun improviso can have a pejorative connotation, meaning something that is thrown together, poorly made, or done without preparation or technique. This differs from my own definition of artistic improvisation as spontaneous creation within the confines of a defined style, using a vocabulary or toolbox that has been prepared through many years of consistent training. Dancers with whom I spoke—from professionals who primarily dance choreography on stage to amateurs who dance only in the streets—bristled at, shied away from, or outright denied the term because of its association with the challenges of the working or lower classes who do not always have the resources they need to survive and must “improvise” solutions in life. However, when asked to explain where the spontaneous creativity of frevo comes from, all the dancers I spoke with offered some version of my definition above—that is, creativity within the boundaries of a defined style. (Some suggested using the word improvisação instead of improviso, but I rarely heard them use the former in practice.) For them, the dancing is directed by the music and the needs of the present situation, especially in the unpredictability of street carnival, and they feel that they can express their individuality while sharing the music's binary rhythmic heartbeat.

The contested connotations of the term “improvisation” were surprising to me because I came with the idea that improvisation was a key strategy of resistance against the strict rules of so many so-called classical or traditional Western art forms. That is, improvisation is often presented as a response and a corrective to the “Western ontology of ‘work’” (Born, Lewis, and Straw Reference Born, Lewis and Straw2017, 9). However, after speaking with frevo dancers, I understand that this idea can be undesirable, unwise, or even dangerous for marginalized peoples who cannot afford to not attempt to fit within these Western ontologies. Such a resistance to the term “improvisation” points to the racism and classism embedded in the misconception that the improvisation of many black art forms is all about feeling and lacks rigor and intellectual preparation (Gottschild Reference Gottschild2003; Goldman Reference Goldman2010). Dance scholar Maria Goretti Rocha de Oliveira describes a conversation she had with master teacher Nascimento do Passo in which he refused to describe frevo as improvisational because of its association with total spontaneity and a lack of work, preplanning, and discipline. Instead, he emphasized the amount of preparation required and stated definitively that frevo is not improvisation, but a distinctive musical technique (Reference Goretti Rocha de Oliveira2017, 108–41).

Nascimento was a poor black man living in Recife, and frevo was one way that he distinguished himself in society. Afro-Brazilian dance in northeastern Brazil has been a means of political action for members of the marginalized periphery (usually black, undereducated, and lower class) to create for themselves “venues of education, self-acceptance, and self-esteem” (Suárez Reference Suárez2013, 153–68). Although Nascimento was not born in Recife, he gained recognition over the years and was considered to be an “authentic” source for frevo knowledge, and he was a key part of the legitimization and academicization of frevo in the 1970s, in the larger context of the Brazilian Northeast's Movimento Armorial, which sought to create an erudite culture (including art, music, dance, poetry, etc.) with elements extricated from popular culture forms of northeastern Brazil.Footnote ¹⁵ He participated in the movement by, for example, teaching frevo classes in the 1980s to popular dance performance troupes such as the Balé Popular do Recife and the Grupo Folclórico Cleonice Veras (Goretti Rocha de Oliveira Reference Goretti Rocha de Oliveira1993, 75–88). Thus, it served him and his objectives as a representative of the value of popular culture to insist on frevo's formalized and methodical technique over its improvisational nature.

As mentioned above, there is a concern among frevo practitioners about the rise in popularity of choreographed stage frevo versus improvisational street frevo. Wilson Aguiar explained that many choreographed dances, from his perspective, are off-time and lack musicality, abandoning the dance's crucial musical connection in favor of a Westernized visual aesthetic. For Wilson, one must study the frevo music repertoire, and, even if a particular song is unfamiliar, one should be familiar enough with the structures of frevo music to be able to predict where it will go after hearing the first few phrases. In addition, it is important that one's dancing not become mechanical after knowing the music intimately. Rather, artistic choices must always appear fresh, surprising, and full of feeling, and one must tell a story (Aguiar Reference Aguiar2018). Otávio Bastos also explained that there are repetitive rhythmic structures in the music that one must study to create another type of virtuosity other than the kind that comes from impressive but mechanically choreographed sequences of tricks (Bastos Reference Bastos2018b). That is to say, a frevo dancer must participate in their own improvisation because “one must do more than assume an imitative position or relax in the belief that one is separate from the dance's development” (Goldman Reference Goldman2010, 38–39). It is this relationship between the dancer, the dance, and the music that contributes to the potentiality of frevo for free individual expression. Thus improvisation provides a means of resistance against choreographed stage frevo that, for some, represents the Westernization and eruditization of frevo and other regional popular dances.

Some practitioners describe frevo improvisation as a purely emotional response to the music, but Wilson Aguiar espouses a practical approach that resists the idea that it is just random expression, or how one is feeling in the moment. For him, the passista’s brain is making constant calculations based on previously trained steps and sequences. He explains:

Similarly, although Nascimento do Passo created a method with only forty fundamental frevo steps, he also famously said, “Há tantos passos, quanto pernambucanos existerem para faze-los” (“There are as many frevo steps as there are Pernambucans to do them”) (Albuquerque de Queiroz Reference Albuquerque de Queiroz2009, 48; translation by author). His confidence here is notable. Nascimento created a rigorous method that includes only the steps that he believed were necessary to learn proper frevo technique; classes that strictly use his method rarely teach any other steps. However, he also opened up the possibility for adapting this technique by allowing students to freely create their own steps and sequences during a roda at the end of class. In the method of Brincantes das Ladeiras, which was partially adapted from Nascimento's teachings, students participate in two rodas: a roda técnica (technical) and a roda livre (free). The roda técnica limits students to a small set of prescribed steps; Wilson Aguiar (Reference Aguiar2018) describes it as a “prison,” but one that is necessary to learn how to work within the confines of the technique and to practice “shifting gears” between steps. The roda livre is completely free and anything goes—the dancer can dance any steps in any order, and they can even include movements from outside of frevo's repertoire (such as samba, capoeira, break dance, vogue, and more). It is the negotiation among an infinite range of possible movements with various and unstable layers of social meaning that makes improvisation a strategy of resistance.

Improvisation is a problematic term not only because of its racial and social connotations, but also because, in practice, the ability to draw on an infinite number of steps also risks the survival of the dance's cultural memory (Goldman Reference Goldman2010, 38–39). That is, allowing any number of innovations from an individual and their various cultural influences could dilute the strength of the technique. Frevo practitioners confront this nomenclatural problem by using another word to describe the dance's improvisational technique: munganga. In Brazilian Portuguese, this word is perhaps even more pejorative than improviso, meaning something that is jerry-rigged or done without technical rigor (and it is also northeastern slang for an ugly girl). However, frevo practitioners have reappropriated the word munganga to refer to the kinesthetic intelligence, technical artistry, and cultural preparedness required of a passista de rua. Nascimento do Passo used the term to describe an instance in which the dancer fails to execute the intended movement and instead transitions into another movement so that the flow of the dance is not disrupted.Footnote ¹⁶ As frevo is a carnival dance that is performed in jam-packed streets, it is less about steps and sequences and more about the ability to switch gears in the moment. It is this skill that is perhaps most valued among foliões.

I propose that munganga is a type of carnivalesque improvisation—an improvisation that embodies the antistructures and inversions of the carnivalesque and resists reified notions of freedom. That is, freedom is not an absolute state, but a process of social negotiations. Munganga is often associated with frevo cinquentão,Footnote ¹⁷ a modality within Nascimento do Passo's method that is marked by more contained energy, fewer acrobatic movements, and the kinesthetic intelligence that is gained over many years of experience. The word cinquentão (fifty) suggests that the style is for people over the age of fifty, but the modality allows anyone—regardless of age, gender, ability, or other physical characteristics—to participate in frevo on their own terms. Eduardo Araújo of Guerreiros do Passo explains:

Nascimento developed the cinquentão modality as he aged and could no longer perform frevo's acrobatics, but Otávio Bastos explained that he was drawn to this approach even as a young student of Nascimento's because, at six feet three inches, he is tall and lanky and felt that he did not fit the typical mold of a frevo dancer (Bastos Reference Bastos2018b). In cinquentão, Otávio found a means of exploring his own individual body and creative potential. Although the modality may at first appear less virtuosic and skillful, frevo cinquentão demands a strong basis in frevo technique that is developed over many years of training, performing, and teaching.

Otávio teaches a frevo cinquentão class at Recife's Paço do Frevo that he promotes as an opportunity to develop one's own frevo style according to one's own body and abilities, with less focus on acrobatics and more on “creativity, improvisation, and a lot of munganga.”Footnote ¹⁸ A typical cinquentão class with Otávio includes a long warm-up and stretch of every part of the lower body, including exercises for each individual toe, to increase body awareness. Otávio teaches only two or three movements per class that students first practice in front of a mirror to drill the technicalities of the steps. Then they traverse the floor in groups of two or three with instructions to think about certain scenarios, dynamics, or feelings while doing the steps. For example, in one class, we were instructed to dance the step chutando de frente (kicking to the front) while pretending that we were among the earliest frevo passistas—capoeira fighters at the turn of the twentieth century. We danced to the halfway point across the floor as though we were being watched by the police, keeping our movements very small, dance-like, and a bit cautious. Once we hit the halfway point, the police “looked away,” and we could dance freely again, and we were instructed to kick violently, with big, dynamic movements. The goal of these exercises was to improvise the transitions between opposing dynamics, such as big or small movements or cautious or aggressive attitudes, prompting us to imagine ourselves reenacting parts of frevo's historical narrative. Learning to quickly make such dynamic transitions is crucial to the frevo cinquentão modality and to developing munganga.

Munganga is more than improvisation. It is about negotiating freedom of movement within the constraints of frevo as a technique, within the limitations of one's own body, and within spatial or societal limitations. Someone with munganga displays all the characteristics required of a good passista de rua or folião: trained, quick-thinking, prepared, smart, flexible, creative, and experienced. This experience is not only experience with the dance, but also experience in the world—specifically, in the messy and sometimes violent world of Recife's carnival. Improvisers gain their skills through situational constraints, and these skills are not just for “self-indulgence, entertainment, or mere leisure activity” or even for survival itself, but as a means of preparing oneself to move in ways that may have previously seemed impossible (Goldman Reference Goldman2010, 142–45). By using a term other than improviso, frevo dancers have regained agency over their process to ensure that it is considered both a legitimate technique and a creative endeavor that cannot quite be pinned down.

In a piece called Fervo (Reference Vicente2006), choreographer Valéria Vicente explored the development of frevo using improvisational methodologies from contemporary dance to deconstruct frevo and portray its inherent violence while retaining the munganga and carnivalesque nature of the dance.Footnote ¹⁹ In her portrayal of frevo's carnivalesque inversions, the folião experiences moments of acceptance, elation, and joy when dancing frevo in the streets of carnival, but that experience is only temporary. Ultimately, the performance highlights—through reenactments of arrests, beatings, and intimidation—the folião’s experience of marginalization, social exclusion, discrimination, and persecution. She created a dramaturgy that does not portray frevo dance in its “purified” form of Pernambucan “intangible cultural heritage,” but instead she highlighted the messy and violent culture from which it arises. Importantly, she did not attempt to fit the steps into classical dance's turned out, first position template or to force the timing into a rigid rhythmic grid. That is, the vocabulary of Fervo remains distinctly frevo and the style maintains its distinct Recifense/Olindense fluidity, not altered to fit a Western performance aesthetic.

In an interview, Valéria Vicente explained to me that, although she is also trained in classical ballet, modern dance, and contemporary dance, she considers herself to be, first and foremost, a foliã (the feminine form of folião) who learned to dance in the streets of carnival. She experiences frevo as a dance of resistance. In telling the story of the folião, Vicente aims to tell a broader story about cultural history in Recife:

For her, frevo is about strength—not a “masculine” aggression but a human strength—and it directs the body to achieve peaks of energy where creative potential lies (Vicente Reference Vicente2018). Importantly, Vicente does not shy away from the centrality of violence in frevo and, through improvisational strategies, she demonstrates the undeniable influence of violence on the dance's creative development over the past century.