JULY IS DANCE FESTIVAL MONTH IN JOINVILLE
The event is in its 21st edition and will bring together around four thousand participants

Joinville has been breathing dance for at least 21 years. The largest event for dance students in Latin America, the Joinville Dance Festival relies on a varied program, including presentations by renowned companies, courses, demonstrations, open-air stages, parallel attractions and and will once again transform Joinville into the Brazilian dance capital, attracting some 4000 participants. Throughout the Dance Festival, approximately 50,000 people will watch performances at the Centreventos Cau Hansen and at the Juarez Machado Theater. Promoted by the Joinville Dance Festival Institute, the event is carried out with the support of its sponsors, the Patronage Laws of the Ministry of Culture, and the State (Santa Catarina) Cultural Foundation, as well as through its own resources obtained through ticket sales.

The Program

In this edition, all of the elements that are found in the major work of art painted by artist Juarez Machado located at the entrance of Centreventos and that constitute various facets of the art form will be brought together on stage during the Joinville Dance Festival at the Centreventos Cau Hansen. This will be seen with the arrival of the performance, "The Great Mystical Circus", by the Ballet do Teatro Guaíra, from Curitiba, which opens the Festival on July 17th.

The new version of "The Great Mystical Circus" is looking to revive one of the most important pieces written especially for a national company, in addition to commemorating two decades since the release of the first performance. This mega-production is 1 hour 40 minutes long and is performed in two acts by 34 dancers. Despite being slightly long, company instructor Gylian Dib guarantees that the audience will be very attentive and on the edge of their seats throughout the performance. According to Dib, "Each act awakens different sensations in the audience. The performance is pure emotion, in addition to being extremely beautiful." The Great Mystical Circus is about a wonderful love story that takes place within a circus dynasty that began in Vienna in 1800.

On Gala Night (07/22), it will be Salvador's Balé Teatro Castro Alves' turn to show two of its great performances to Joinville Dance Festival audiences. "The Archive and the Mission", which debuted in May 2001at the Castro Alves Theater, originated between 1928 and 1940, during two ethnographic and musical studies conducted in Brazil called, "The Mission of Folklore Studies" and "The Luís Heitor Corrêa de Azevedo Archive". These collections were a result of the modernist movement and served as a resource for national composers of the age. The majority of the music composed accompanied ritual dances, both dramatic and social. It was from this form that the material was translated into contemporary discourse and transformed into "The Archive and the Mission".

"Pracatum", on the other hand, foresees an abstract image of a percussion-driven universe portraying a happy, dancing Bahia. By repeating its tonalities, textures, timbres, and choreographed forms and phrases, the performance is designed to create a dreamy setting and to take the audience's eyes and ears on a pleasant journey into a puzzle of sound, light, and movement.

The last day of the event, the 27th, will be the Night of Champions, which will bring back to the stage the winning compositions of competition night contestants, classified into seven different modalities: Classical Repertoire Ballet, Classical Ballet, Contemporary Dance, Jazz, Street Dance, Popular Dance, and Tap Dance, sub-divided into junior, senior, and advanced categories.

Based on last year's example, July 22nd will be reserved as a day to reflect upon dance, through actions that contribute to the education of all Festival participants. There will be round-table discussions where distinguished names from dance will be discussing the direction of this art form. Another informative contribution of the festival for all those who come to Joinville will be the parallel events, including a dance-themed exhibition of costumes and video expo, which have already been confirmed for this year.

Evolution

As the years have passed, the modest Joinville Dance Festival, which in 1983 received 40 schools and around 600 dance students at the Sociedade Harmonia Lyra auditorium, has grown to the point of becoming a reference across the country and abroad, encouraging the art of dance and serving as a model for the rise of more than a dozen similar festivals that happen in Brazil throughout the year. Almost all renowned national and international companies and some of today's greatest names in dance have already graced the stages of the Joinville Dance Festival, such as the Brazilian ballerinas Ana Botafogo, Mária Haydèe, and Cecília Kerche, as well as the celebrated Russian dancer Nina Speranskava, among others. Among the men, the list includes Fernando Bujones, Hernan Piquín, and Marcel Misailidis, to name a few.

Many other names that today have featured spots in renowned companies around the world have already been a part of the Joinville Festival as dance students. The best example of this is Amazonian Marcelo Gomes, 21 years old. In 1993 at the 11th Dance Festival, he was elected the "Discovery" of that edition. Today, he is a soloist with the American Ballet Theatre in New York and returned to Joinville as an invited guest to dance with Cecília Kerche on opening night of the Festival in 2001. Fernanda Diniz, Pollyana Ribeiro and Daniela Severian also followed the same route, attending the Festival as dance students.

Throughout 21 years, more than 70,000 students and professionals have participated in the event. The performances have been seen by more than 1 million people. Today, the Joinville Dance Festival involves about 4000 participants and is recognized not only for its splendor, but also for its organization, technical quality, and capacity to bring together leisure, information, art, and education in a gathering of almost all Brazilian states and even neighboring countries.

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