This is the blog for the Elmira College travel class to Brazil in May 2010.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Last Day

We leave Brazil this afternoon, and I think we are all pretty sad that our time here has come to an end. This class has been an amazing and memorable experience, with so many new and different things to see and do. We have to be packed and out of our rooms by 3:00 this afternoon, so everyone is getting in their last bits of shopping and beach or pool time. Our hotel has a small pool on the second floor, with glass walls that look out over the street and the beach, so it´s a pretty nice place to spend time floating in the water and watching the surfers in the waves.

The past couple days have been busy with research projects, the beach, walking around the Pelourinho (the beautiful old part of town), buying last-minute presents for people back home, and watching the people here. We also got to see some of the cultural forms of dancing at a really wonderful dance performance. The show started with the earliest dance forms--with the mix of African and Portuguese and Indigenous, moving to the more formal Candomblé, and then the really interesting fire dancing. The fire dance had a man carrying a large flaming platter on his head and whirling flaming torches. At one point, he jumped in the fire and his feet briefly flamed as he danced around. He rubbed the torches right on his face and torso, all the while with the drums and chanting really building the intensity. We also saw a performance of the machete dance, which, along with Capoiera, is a highly stylized form of combat that only looks like a dance. Historically, it had to be sneaked under the gaze of the slave owners, and the performers move slowly and purposefully, with smiles on their faces, as they circle and jump and kick and when they actually clash their machetes, they hit so hard that sparks fly from them. It was pretty intense. We also got to see Capoiera performed by some of the top artists, and it was incredible! These men were so flexible and fierce, and their flips and kicks and punches and whirls seemed almost to defy gravity and pretty much all the laws of physics. They were so coordinated that they were kicking at each other´s heads at the rate of several kicks per person per second and they never actually hit each other once during the performace. The audience literally gasped out loud. It was incredible! (We´ve also been seeing Capoiera practitioners in the mornings on the beach, just practicing informally out in the sun and rocks and waves. Not all of them are so good, but it is really interesting to watch).

We´ll be back home tomorrow afternoon after a long flight. We have to transfer planes in Rio, which means we´ll be adding about 4 extra hours to our flight home. Then comes the long ride back by bus to campus, and then it is research project time for the students. We´ll have a public presentation of our work and then, sad to say, our amazing class on Brazil will be over. It´s been a truly terrific class and a truly terrific experience. We´ve had such a great group of students, and our experiences have been so rich and full, it has been a real pleasure to be able to do this class.

We´ll see you all back in New York!

No comments:

Post a Comment