In its sixth appearance at White Bird, Grupo Corpo, the popular Brazilian dance company, closed White Bird’s 2024-25 season on April 30 with a thrilling, intensely musical evening of dance.

Featuring two works choreographed by artistic director Rodrigo Pederneiras, 21 and GIRA, the program reflected the company’s signature influences of Brazilian movement and culture and African rhythms ground in classical dance techniques. The company’s name, Grupo Corpo or “Body Group” in Portuguese, appropriately fits its signature style of synchronized movements as the company moves as one organism or body, as seen in the evening’s dances. 

21 

Opening the double bill was 21 (1992), the first work in which music was composed exclusively for the company, a groundbreaking development which allowed them to fully explore the use of Brazilian culture in their choreography. Using a score composed by Marco Antônio Guimarães — artistic director of the Uakti Instrumental Workshop and designer of the group’s unique instruments — Pederneiras created a ballet in three movements that weaves the company’s 22 dancers into rhythmic and timbral combinations around the number 21. The result is an extraordinary production that is at once cerebral and original. 

Through the layered repetition of the music, the piece became a series of tone poems in which the dancers formed and dissolved into pairs and groups as they moved to the music. The precise synchronicity and fluid movement of the dancers was striking, even as they pivoted to change direction across the stage, flying past each other without a hint of hesitation.

As the work continued, it moved from ensemble sets to more partnering and solo moments. In one striking movement, a dancer pulls up from the ground to his shoulders again and again. Dressed in vivid leotards in solid yellow, florals and stripes, at times the dancers gave the distinct impression of tropical birds preening and dancing. The piece culminated with the music and movement building to a colorful and transportive finale. It was a performance to marvel at. 

GIRA

The second work of the evening, GIRA (2017), was inspired by the Afro-Brazilian Umbanda religion, with its rituals of dancing and chanting to communicate with the orisha spirits. Pederneiras’ choreography reflects the dramatic movements of the Umbanda and Candomblé ceremonies, drawing the audience into the mesmerizing power of those primal, ritualistic rites.

The primal nature was reflected in the costumes, designed by Freusa Zechmeister, in which the company of dancers appeared seemingly nude from the waist up, even androgynous, and all wearing long white, flowing skirts of raw linen. Each had a flash of red around their neck, contributing to the eerie feel of an ancient ritual. The music by São Paulo trio Meta Meta fused punk, jazz, samba, Afrobeat, and candomblé into a compelling hypnotic beat.

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The dancers gave the sense of determined worshipers caught up in a dazzling and powerful  ceremony. Religious ceremonies often include dancing and chanting, including spinning in circles. GIRA, “spin” in Portuguese, transfixed with its choreographed ecstatic dancing. The dancers were driven, trancelike, by the music to keep moving in breathtaking solos and partnering, then coming together to act as one body. There were movements that felt like loving baptisms and others that threatened violence. 

When not actively dancing, the dancers sat around the perimeter of the stage covered by black shrouds of transparent tulle, throwing off the cloak to dance and then returning to the wall. They felt like silent powerful witnesses, with the audience, to the astonishing rites performed in front of them.