By Anthony Howell.

Gafieira Estudantina.

RIO DE JANIERO – I’m learning what for me is a new dance.  It’s called samba da gafieira.  It was invented in the gafieiras of Rio de Janiero.  The gafieiras were the traditional dance-halls of Rio, so, if you like, it’s ‘dance-hall’ samba, and so it’s danced in the embrace, unlike samba no pé – which you may dance in a crowd at Carnival, but you’re not in contact with a partner.  Gafieira is supposed to have developed out of the maxixe, a partner dance that appeared in Brazil at the same time as the tango was emerging in Buenos Aires – and was probably similar to the tango danced in the black clubs of Buenos Aires in the eighteen-eighties.  I get the feeling that gafieira was influenced by the tango, since it uses displacements of the partner’s leg similar to the tango’s sacada, and the lady also flicks her leg in a way that reminds me of a tango voleo.

After that, forget any resemblance.  Tango’s musical base is essentially European; indeed tango composers have borrowed from Chopin and Schumann.  The beat is not syncopated.  Gafieira is danced to samba and bossa nova.  It’s a different feeling.  The music swings with its Latin beat, though it’s still a dance based in lead-and-follow rather than set enchainments.  However, unlike tango, your partner’s feet are between yours rather than in front of you, the embrace can be looser – except in moves like ‘big knife’ – and you use the hands to lead a lot of its turns, which would be frowned on in contemporary tango.  It uses waltz-like spins, and may have been influenced by the waltz, and it can get quite acrobatic and sexy, with the man wrapping the torso of the woman around his throat, so that she shows her knickers.  You might think that this was very unlike the usually more formal tango, however, I have to say that when Cariocas (those who are native to Rio) dance the tango they exhibit a partiality for extravagant aerials and also show their knickers.  Basically, if you dance in Rio, choose your underwear carefully.

I’M A TANGO-OBSESSIVE, so dancing gafieira is a challenge.  I do one private lesson a week with a young man called Joelson Ferreira.  I asked him to teach me because when I saw him dance it was cool, fluid and wonderfully rhythmical.  Gafieira is not easy: the samba beat is fast, and I’d seen a lot of people dancing it badly, without managing to get properly on the music.  Joe is pretty strict with me, insisting that I leave my tango behind.  It’s crucial that I do.  The body moves forward and back more in gafieira; the weight changes are exaggerated, and the partner sways with you, and I have to get the ‘step-replace step, step-replace step’ going, understanding that there is a this-side-then-that-side symmetry to the dance that again is different to the tango.

Then I do a beginners’ group class once a week at the studio of Carlinhos de Jesus – a famous dancer who has set up his establishment in a lovely old house in leafy Botafogo – painted yellow with blue shutters.  The class is fun.  I am the only English speaker in it.  It’s full of delicious, young and willowy cariocas.  This fact alone recommends it, and makes the gafieira scene different to the tango scene here in Rio.  In Europe and in the States, and indeed in Buenos Aires, the tango community is getting younger.  In Rio, it’s still an old person’s scene – most of its practitioners are nearly as old as I am.  Milongas (a name for a type of dance, but also the name for an evening of dancing) are formal affairs:  huge arrangements of flowers, set seating arrangements, and the tables given space at the expense of the floor.  You see lots of old ladies dancing with handsome young men.  The young men are taxi dancers, hired to dance for the evening by their older partners.  This generates a rather fusty atmosphere, which probably alienates younger women – after all, the nicest young men are all in some wrinkly’s arms!

Perhaps I’m being unfair.  The tango scene is nevertheless quite healthy in Rio, and it’s interesting that nowhere in the world is now a place where one sort of dance excludes others.  Swing and rock-and-roll and salsa are all very popular in Buenos Aires – indeed, Miguel Zotto, the star of Tango por Dos is no mean rock and roller.  Equally, in Rio, many of the samba teachers are also excellent tango dancers and turn up at the milongas (Joelson is very good at tango – and is known as ‘Tango-Joe’).  Ultimately, the tango remains the queen of all dances – but sometimes one needs to get away from the atmosphere of the court!

LAST SATURDAY I WENT with a group of enterprising tango friends to the Gafieira Estudantina, a genuine old dance-hall, situated in the Praca Tiradentes, right in the centre of Rio.  Since 1928, this has been the haunt of bohemians, singers and composers.  The wooden floor is a generous space.

Here the atmosphere is less stuffy than at the milongas, though there is a sprinkling of black samba maestros, dressed up to the nines, in the style of the thirties, weaving and cleaving to their partners in a way that brings the jazzy feel of the samba to life.  It’s interesting to note that, like the tango, the samba is actually a set of dances.  This is true of all embrace-dancing.  Ballroom involves sets of quickstep, waltz, foxtrot, and maybe the cha-cha-cha or the gay Gordons.  Tango alternates ‘tandas’ of tango, vals and milonga – with perhaps one set of salsa or rock-and-roll thrown in.  Samba’s family of dances includes gafieira, salsa (at least, whatever you call it, the soltadas where you break the embrace and your partner goes under your arm in a number of spaghetti-like ways suggests salsa to me), a smooth version of swing, and finally bolero – a sedate amalgam of ballroom and tango, danced to Diana Krall singing Bésame Mucho or Nana Caymmi singing Solamente una Vez, the girls swooning in extended poses over their partners’ forearms.  Oh, and then there’s forro, which is danced deliciously close, pelvis to pelvis with a double emphasis to each side which reminds me of the way we used to dance ska down the Count Suckle Cue Club in Praed Street, back in the sixties!

Banda Para Todos.

The Banda Para Todos, which I think is the resident band, play several brilliant sets – and it’s a nice eight-piece band with fabulous singers.  After several caipirinhas I’m up on the floor, dancing.  I need a little alcohol to dance samba, whereas, with the tango, if I drink, I can’t maintain my axis, so I don’t.  The scene here is more mixed than at a milonga – black, white, young, old – and we dance till well past three.  At one point, the DJ plays a tango – in order to welcome our party to the gafieira – and we all strut our particular stuff.  But I’m falling in love with gafieira.  It’s so flexible, so oozy; and it’s great to dance in the embrace to some fabulous bossa nova.

Google ‘samba da gafieira’ to find out where you can dance it – there’s plenty in Brick Lane!

A former dancer with the Royal Ballet, Anthony Howell was founder of The Theatre of Mistakes and performed solo at the Hayward Gallery and at the Sydney Biennale. His articles on visual art, dance, performance, and poetry have appeared in many publications including Art Monthly, The London Magazine, Harpers & Queen, The Times Literary Supplement, and he is a frequent contributor to The Fortnightly Review. In 2001 he received a LADA bursary to study the tango in Buenos Aires and now teaches the dance at his studio/gallery The Room in Tottenham Hale. He is the author of a seminal textbook, The Analysis of Performance Art: A Guide to Its Theory and Practice.

This three-part letter from Rio continues here. The third part is here.