A dança dos congos da cidade de Goiás: performances de um grupo afro-brasileiro

• Autor(a) principal: Macedo, Eliene Nunes
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFG
• dARK ID: ark:/38995/0013000007vk3
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.bc.ufg.br/tede/handle/tede/5307
• topic: Performances culturais; Afro-brasileiro; Dança dos congos; Conhecimento encorporado; Patrimônio imaterial; Cultural performances; Afro-brazilian; Congo dance; Embodied knowledge; ARTES::DANCA

This master thesis introduces the Congo dance, which has been performed in Goiás City (Goiás/Brazil) since the first half of the 18th century. In this ritual, we are able to watch the fight between Moors and Christians. The routine is divided into street parades and representations of an embassy mission, performed by poor Afro-Brazilian men, usually at the city’s Historical Centre (held as a UNESCO world cultural heritage). The performances generally take place during the Divine Holy Ghost and the Our Lady of the Rosary festivals. This is an ethnographic research project, which aims at interpreting the performances of the Congo dance ritual and its complex meaning relations. Therefore, a detailed description of the Congo dance structure was done, by highlighting its gestures, orality, music, clothing and dramatization. Also, as an analytical category, the theoretical background to such cultural performances was reviewed, aiming at analysing the dance and dancers’ embodied knowledge. Furthermore, some questions on the congos’ cultural social historical were raised, bringing some comparison among the thoughts on ethnographic studies on the Congo dance and the possibility of an interlocution between Brandão’s ethnography (1977) and the one presented in this paper. Eventually, the representation and appropriation of this way of expression towards the whole Goiás City’s cultural heritage and how safeguard policy is done were deeply observed. As a conclusion, the study states that the Congo dance from Goiás City is the materialisation of the iconography of people who live, fight, resist and remain.