Let it Burn

In ‘Let it Burn’ Marcela Levi, Lucía Russo and Tamires Costa confront the audience with historical and contemporary clichés about the black body. What starts as a mixture of burlesque and stand-up develops into an explosive, dizzying performance. Dancer Tamires Costa subverts black stereotypes by embodying them all the more excessively: bulging eyes, frenetic and grotesque dancing, a smile distorted to the point of grimace and aggressively displayed white teeth take racist blackface practices to extremes. In ‘Let it burn’, Costa’s body functions as a hyperlink to other black artists – to the hypnotic and majestic movements of a Nina Simone, to Michael Jackson’s perfect technique and virtuosity, to performances by Josephine Baker, Dizzy Gillespie or Valeska Gert. In front of the eyes of the audience, Tamires Costa literally sets the stage on fire in her dance solo to jazz, soul and Brazilian funk – let it burn!

The choreographers and performers Marcela Levi (*1973 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and Lucía Russo (*1975 Patagonia, Argentina) have been working together since 2010. Together they founded their own production company, ‘Improvável Produções’. Since then, they have developed and produced several projects that have been performed at major festivals and theatres in South America and Europe. ‘Let it Burn’ premiered in Rio de Janeiro in 2017, asphalt 2022 is showing the production as a German premiere.