A shoulder turns, deliberate; a glance – held, then broken. The cabaret begins not with fanfare, but with a shift in attention: to the body, to its codes, to its refusal to stay in line. Often overlooked as not serious enough, cabaret historically became the theatrical site of dissidence, of the exploration of gender, and of what could not be otherwise said. At Casa do Povo, cabaret carries its own lineage – rooted not only in the house’s history of political theatre but also in Jewish diasporic traditions in which satire, song, and the stage became forms of survival and critique. In a unique encounter, Alexandre Paulikevitch and MEXA bring their contemporary work on cabaret, keeping the energy of this form as something that doesn’t seduce so much as unsettle.
Paulikevitch, born and based in Beirut, is one of the few male artists working in the tradition of baladi – often reduced through a colonial lens as “belly dance” – and he does so as an act of political reclamation. His dance is slow, sinuous, alert to the gaze that tries to fix it. Through hips, breath, and repetition, Paulikevitch undoes the layers of orientalism and homophobia that have long sought to discipline his form.
His work carves space for softness as strategy, sensuality as resistance, and ambiguity as truth. To watch him is to feel how deeply the archive of the body runs – and how much must be danced out of it.
Emerging from the streets and shelters of São Paulo, MEXA is a collective forged in urgency. Researching the possibilities of creating fictions from its own identity, MEXA is composed mostly of trans and queer people and has been shaped by the Brazilian state’s neglect and violence. MEXA has been creating theatrical forms in the space of Casa do Povo, and while traveling the world. By singing, lip-syncing, performing scenes and selves, they created loud and unruly re-elaborations of personal and collective myths.
In this project conceived for the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, as a result of a shared residency, Paulikevitch and MEXA open two nights intertwining their practices and narratives: bodies turn away, or insist on being seen; identities become choreographies – improvised, relational – with the sense that the theatre must always remain unfinished – porous to desire, to the noise of the present. Together, they reclaim the cabaret as a form born at the edge of institutions, always too loud, too queer, too excessive. With them, cabaret becomes what it has always threatened to be: a rehearsal for another way of being together.