Festival Internacional de Artes Cenicas da Bahia

25 Oct. 2009
http://www.fiacbahia.com/

There is this International stage arts festival in Bahia going on right now from the 19-25. They have groups from other places around the world and several from other places in Brazil.

I was really excited and I wanted to see about 4 of them really bad. they varied a lot in topics. One was about palestinian-Israeli conflict, and one from Peru called snow.
The ones I saw were about hip-hop (yes /hippy-hoppy/ in Bras-port). It had no words just dance but it wasn't like music either it was about the city I think. There were just a lot of street sounds and then people were running around backwards really fast. I wasn't very good at reading into it but people used their bodies in ways I have never seen in my life and didn't even imagine.

The other one, Alem da Magica, was about the story of how a Japanese magician became a magician and what he learned from his teacher. It is from Sao Paulo, Brazil.
I suppose the was an illusionist, and his stuff really worked! They were tricks I've never seen before, just super high quality.
There's the illusionist:

There were some kids in the audience and one was at an age where he was learning to speak, and in one of the skits tha the did, he pulled out a rock, it wasn't the magical part or anything, and the little toddler yelled out "e uma pedra"
'it's a rock!"

[I got most of the pictures from the FIAC bahia website, the other with me with my camera]

* Interesting cultural note. In São Paulo is the biggest Japanese community outside Japan, and this illusionist is from there, but he was speaking in Portuguese for this play, and I found it really interesting that when he said a couple of words in Japanese, he said them with a Brazilian accent!
It was so cute. I know some words in Japanese--I do not speak Japanese-but I know enought to tell that he said "/arigatu/ instead of /arigatou/ and stuff like that. It was really interesting.

These last two pictures are at the Allianca Francesa building where the Alem da Magica was shown. Behind me a couple are about to be interviewed for a TV show about this festival.

This is the view from that little terrace-type thing. To see the whole Bahia de todos os Santos. (Bay of All Saints)