AfroRaiz’s “Flying River” A Showcase of Transformance-Pedagogy

By: Dan Baron Cohen*

During the first sixteen years of its existence, the Transformance Institute has dedicated itself to the development of an eco-pedagogical paradigm project of ‘Good Living’ developed through longitudinal performance research and experiment to revive ‘sleeping roots’ and explore contemporary questions, through theatre, dance, percussion, music, spoken village-square poetry, and hybrid arts installations, in the Brazilian Amazon.

For the Institute, excellence, in research and of performance, is inseparable from the nurture of ethics, aesthetics and governance of sustainable worlds. As a result, in 2008, the Institute won the first of 12 national awards from the Ministries of Culture and of Education to develop the project Rivers of Meeting in the small Afro-Indigenous community of Cabelo Seco, Marabá, between the Itacaiúnas and Tocantins Rivers, in Pará State of Brazil.

The Amazon has the world’s greatest biodiversity and reserves of iron and drinking water. The Institute’s defense of the Amazon’s forests and rivers were advanced by publications in 2011 of the CD ‘Voices of the Land’ (a 7-year collaboration with the Federal University of the South and South-East of Pará); in 2013 of the CD 'Amazon, Our Land’ (a 5-year of collaboration with Afro-Indigenous youth at risk); the 2014 foundation of a Community University of the Rivers (Cabelo Seco community); and international performance tours in the USA (2015), Asia (2016) and Europe (2019), recognized by UNESCO and UNICEF.

Among so many international collaborations, the Institute was particularly struck in 2017-18 by collaboration potentials revealed in workshop exchanges and dialogues with the Department of Theatre and Performance and the EPA research project at Monash University. Given the extremity of recent forest fires in Australia and the Amazon, the Institute is keen to develop a collaborative project committed to eco-social justice through layered, affective and motivating potentials of performance.

In this video, watch AfroRaiz young dance-percussion artists from Marabá in the Brazilian Amazon perform 'Flying River.’ The piece defends the River Tocantins, anticipates pandemic like COVID-19, and advocates a Good Living future for all!

 

*Dan Baron Cohen

Dan Baron Cohen is a community arts educator and eco-cultural activist of Welsh-Quebecois origin, who lives in Marabá City, Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon. After completing doctoral research in Oxford University, Dan collaborated with young people and their post-industrial communities at risk in northern England and South Wales, and with conflicted communities in the North of Ireland. In 1998, a visiting professorship launched collaborations with landless, indigenous, trade-union and university communities across Brazil. He has dedicated his past 22 years to developing a 'transformance pedagogy' (sustainable transformation through performance), in collaboration with relevant networks in Africa, Asia, Latin America, North America and Europe. Since 2004, Dan has applied ‘transformance’ techniques to develop community security, solar powered media, and community cooperatives; to recover medicinal plants; and to nurture a new paradigm of integrated education through performance. 

Between 2001-12, Dan contributed to the Latin America Network of Arts for Transformation and the International Council of the World Social Forum. Between 2004-10, Dan was President of the International Drama-Education Association (IDEA), cofounding/ chairing the World Alliance for Arts Education (2006-10), collaborating with UNESCO, and co-founding the Brazilian Network of Arteducators. Today, Dan prioritizes ‘Rivers of Meeting’, an 11-year paradigm project in the Afro-Indigenous community of Cabelo Seco, which has won national and international awards for nurturing youth collectives whose artistic-cultural leadership builds sustainable community.

Dan has published essays, poems and the books: Theatre of Self-Determination (Derry, 2001), Alfabetização Cultural (São Paulo, 2004), Harvest in Times of Drought (Belem, 2011), and 8 ‘Pedagogical Calendars’ on Rivers of Meeting. His international communitybased collective sculptures in Brazil ‘The Castanheiras of Eldorado dos Carajás’ (1999), and ‘The Other 500 Years’ (2001), are known as theatres of self-determination.