‘Só a ANTROPOFAGIA nos une. Socialmente. Economicamente. Filosoficamente’

(Only anthropophagy unites us. Socially. Economically. Philosophically)[1]

ESTRATÉGIAS COREOGRÁFICAS PARA ENGOLIR O MUNDO (Choreographic strategies to devour the world) is an Afro-futurist interpretation of Oswald de Andrade’s Manifesto Antropofágico (1928). The manifesto sought to claim a genuine Brazilian expression of modernity amidst the foundation of the republic and the rise of industrialization. In this performance, Ymoirá Micall invokes AJEJU—a word from the Pajubá vocabulary, the language adopted by trans people in the 1970s to communicate during Brazil’s military dictatorship. AJEJU comes from AJEUM, which means food, a word that originated in Yoruba. As a concept, AJEJU is a strategy for continuing to feed on the practices and technologies of transness in dialogue with Oswald de Andrade’s concept of anthropophagy. In her performance, Ymoirá Micall translates compositions of the Latin American body-territory into choreographic elements that reference language in the Brazilian trans and travesti community. This forms ideas that are not only aesthetic but also political, highlighting transcestral existences in the arts. The performance further promotes a new imaginary for bodies that have been crossed by colonial hierarchies. 

[1] Oswald de Andrade, Obras Completas (vol. VI) Do Pau-Brasil à Antropofagia e às Utopias (2nd edn., Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1978), 13.