appearances in several events and TV shows. In 2000 GRN participated of the international tour of Metrópole with the Midnight Circus, from the French director Pierrot Bidon. This was also the year when Beltrão enrolled in the dance university In 2001 the duet Do Popping ao Pop ou Vice-Versa premiered at the festival Duos de Dança no SESC, in Rio de Janeiro. With this piece Bruno made his official début in the contemporary dance scene in Rio. It was also a turning point on the choreographer’s career – the first step to set streetdance free from sheer virtuosity and from the patterned reproduction of choreographic structures that are inherent to this dance form. Since then his research is oriented by the exchange between hip hop and the reflexive and inventive environment of contemporary dance. At the end of the year Bruno assumed the direction of Grupo de Rua alone when his partner Rodrigo left the company to develop his own projects. In 2002, the company began a fruitful international career, with presentations at Rencotres Choreographiques de Seine-Saint-Denis, MC93 in Paris and the festival “Danças na Cidade" in Lisbon. In 2003, Grupo de Rua was invited by the French choreographer Jérôme Bel to perform at Klapstuk Festival in Belgium. In the same year, the company performed at Springdance (Utrecht), Ile Danse (Ajaccio), Tanz im August (Berlin) Internationales Tanzfest (Hanover), Yokohama Dance Summit (Japan), Hebbel Theater (Berlin) and Opkomst (Utrecht). In 2004, the company performed at La Ferme du Buisson (Noisiel), Kunsten Festival des Arts (Brussels), Ruhrfestspiele (Recklinghausen), Tanztage (Bern), CSS Theater (Udine), Rencontres de la Villete (Paris), Kampnagel (Hamburg) and at the Festival Breakin’Walls (Amsterdam). Besides his creative work as a choreographer, Beltrão also works on many other different spheres to encourage reflection and to promote street dance, whether working as a curator or taking part on social programs. He has also written the essay Breakdance: Fissão e a Reação em cadeia for the book Lições de Dança 2, published by Beltrão’s university, UniverCidade.

Acknowledgements: 2002 – Beltrão is elected the upcoming choreographer of the year and the company is considered “one of the most creative of the new generation” by O GLOBO (second largest Brazilian newspaper)2005 – Upcoming choreographer of the year - BALLETANZ YEAR BOOK2008/2009 – “Prix Special du Jury”, Syndicat Profissionel de La Critique de Theatre, Music et Danse, France2009 – Best Choreographer – APCA, Associação Paulista dos Críticos de Arte.2009 – Best Dance Performance – BRAVO Arts Magazine, Brasil

U.S. TOUR REPRESENTATION H-ART MANAGEMENTFor more information http://www.h-artmanagement.com

U.S. TOUR PRODUCER H-ART MANAGEMENT, HAROLD NORRIS, DIRECTORU.S. TOUR MANAGER JESSICA V. CABRERAU.S. PRODUCTION MANAGER STAN PRESSNER

PRODUCTION GRUPO DE RUA (RIO DE JANEIRO)

:: A CO-PRODUCTION KUNSTEN FESTIVAL des ARTS (BRUXELLES), FESTIVAL INTERNACIONAL de las ARTES, SALAMANCA 2008-JUNTA DE CASTILLA Y LEÓN, LE GRAND THÉÂTRE DE LUXEMBOURG, FESTIVAL D’AUTOMNE Á PARIS :: WITH THE COLLABORATION OF HEBBEL-am-UFER, LA FERME du BUISSON

presented by

REDCAT

Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater

California Institute of the Arts

January 19–23, 2010 8:30 pm

GRUPO DE RUA: H3

Bruno Beltrão, Artistic Director

CHOREOGRAPHY BRUNO BELTRÃOEXECUTIVE PRODUCER MARIANA BELTRÃOASSISTANT DIRECTOR UGO ALEXANDRE NEVESSET DESIGN GUALTER PUPOLIGHTING DESIGN RENATO MACHADOCOSTUME DESIGN MARCELO SOMMERMUSIC LUCAS MARCIER | RODRIGO MARÇAL—ARPX ADMINISTRATION JOÃO MARCOS BELTRÃOPRODUCTION GABRIELA WEEKSLIGHTING GILBERTO OLIVEIRA & LEANDRO BARRETO PRODUCTION GABRIELA WEEKSADMINISTRATION JOÃO MARCOS BELTRÃO

DANCERS BRUNO NERES KLEBERSON GONÇALVESBRUNO DUARTE KRISTIANO GONÇALVES DANILO PEREIRA LUIZ CARLOS GADELHA AUGUSTA EDUARDO HERMANSON THIAGO ALMEIDA FIILIPI DE MORAIS H3 is funded in part by the National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts, with leading funding from

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and additional funding from The Ford Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,

and the Community Connections Fund of the MetLife Foundation. Additional support generously provided by The George

and MaryLou Boone Fund for Artistic Advancement, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The hip-hop dancer is a solitary warrior. His gaze is turned inward, concentrated on his incredible physical prowess, his virile confrontation with his own body. A solo street performer, he attracts the attention of a passerby with the first twitch of a rapid-fire acrobatic dance. But for Bruno Beltrão, a Brazilian choreographer, hip-hop is much more than entertainment. Like the graffiti artist, the hip-hop dancer proudly asserts his place in the city, marking out his territory, delighting in his skill, very much alive. An iconoclast, Bruno Beltrão felt the desire to exploit otherness, the territory of the brother who is not necessarily the enemy, and to explore the multidimensional space of contemporary dance. He seeks to take hip-hop out of its cocoon, to pull the dancer from his isolation, to set street dance free from sheer virtuosity. Three years ago with his previous piece, H2, he shattered the macho image of hip-hop by inserting—the ultimate taboo—two dancers in a minute of impassioned kissing, a trail-blazing political act. In H3, the choreographer gives his dancers the freedom to explore, to seek out the other—jumping on, shoving and colliding with each other—or to find moments of unexpected tenderness.

NO LONGER ALONE. They are Brazilian. The street has been their battleground. These nine desperados are veterans of hip-hop, and dance is the very air they breathe—the rarefied air of the city. Under the impetus of the young choreographer Bruno Beltrão they take the stage by storm, expanding their own vital space. Acclaimed in Europe and renowned for shaking up preconceived ideas about street dance, the Grupo de Rua is making its U.S. début. Like a powerful but fragile commando unit, the dancers overturn conventional codes, creating a remarkable fusion of hip-hop and contemporary dance. The choreographer has adopted a radical approach, putting hip-hop through the wringer and tossing out its musical and visual clichés. The normal restrictions of the space disintegrate; the arena no longer exists. The dancers come and go, moving from darkness to harsh light on either side of a thin candescent wire. Frontal presentation is just one form among many as the performers roam the stage, dancing with their backs to the audience or running backwards. No special effects or fancy images, just the outlines of a few windows and a black mirrored stage glistening like asphalt after a rainstorm. There is music and rhythm, but it is the sounds of the city—the squeaking noises of the dancers’ shoes, which then return as samples in a pulsing electronic soundtrack. The essence of hip-hop is retained, as the choreographer preserves its unmistakable figures and the high voltage energy of his break dancers. But the ground is no longer just a display case for their dancing prowess. It becomes an unfailing ally offering another level of expertise. This is a dance of affirmation that at times draws on the Afro-Brazilian dance-combat capoeira, but is by no means a solo performance vehicle. The Group de Rua rushes headlong into dance, creating astonishing duets and trios as they collide and balance against each other in a constant torrent of bodies. The space between the dancers is charged with the promise of an encounter as they push the boundaries of hip-hop into brand new territory.

HIP-HOP IN CRISIS. Bruno Beltrão is driven by a rare determination. He has been a street performer since the age of nine, and has experimented with the urban dance in several forms. In 1996, at the age of sixteen he founded Grupo de Rua with a friend in Niteroi, a small town near Rio de Janeiro. Three years later, the young company won an international championship in Naples. In 2000, Bruno Beltrão enrolled in studies in philosophy and the history of art, in addition to plunging into contemporary dance. He then took over as the company director. After seeing The Show Must Go On by French choreographer Jérôme Bel, an avant-garde work presented to Montreal audiences at the FIND in October 2001, he too embarked on an exercise in deconstruction. The result was Too Legit to Quit, a piece that launched him onto the international scene in 2002. Now acknowledged as a creative force in Brazil, for the past 12 years he has been deconstructing street dance movements and questioning the distance between theatre and the street. Unlike other choreographers, Bruno Beltrão does not seek to transpose the street to the stage, but to enrich hop-hop with the infinite possibilities of choreography. “Hip-Hop launched into orbit a rich, innovative vocabulary. Hip-hop now needs to be placed in a situation of crisis. By dissecting and jettisoning its vocabulary, new aesthetics can be discovered. “ Rigorous and exhilarating, the work of this young Brazilian and his Group de Rua brings a breath of fresh air to this dance form, cheerfully injecting it with incredible inventiveness. – Text by Isabelle Poulin

ABOUT BRUNO BELTRÃOBruno Beltrão was born in Niterói, a city in the vicinity of Rio de Janeiro, in 1979. In 1993 he began his first street dance lessons, in Niterói, with the Israeli teacher Yoram Szabo. From 1995 on, he engaged in a research to get thoroughly acquainted with this dance style, still quite unheard of in Brazil. In 1996 he created the company, back then called Grupo de Rua de Niterói, with his partner Rodrigo Bernardi. During its first two years, the company was devoted to competitive dance festivals and special

GRUPO DE RUA: H3