How to create a dance of self-defense?

Davi Pontes and Wallace Ferreira began shaping the Repertório series in 2018, drawing from gestural codes circulating within Black and queer communities in Rio de Janeiro – subtle signals that allow recognition and safe communication in public space.

Now, surrounded by the audience and with disarming simplicity, naked and without music, Pontes and Ferreira engage in a choreography that moves between synchronicity and suspension. The rhythm of their sneakers on the floor becomes more than sound: it becomes a shared language, a force that gathers them in space, a counter-military march.

At moments they freeze, as if something were about to happen, or as if becoming the queer and Black monuments that public spaces still lack.

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Biographies

Davi Pontes is an artist, choreographer, and researcher with a BA and MA in Arts from Universidade Federal Fluminense and additional studies at ESMAE (Portugal). Since 2016, he has presented work at major institutions and festivals across the U.S., Europe, and Brazil, including the University of Pennsylvania, International DANCE Festival München, MITsp – Festival Internacional de Teatro de São Paulo, and the Biennale de la Danse de Lyon. He has completed residencies at ImPulsTanz [8:tension], La Becque, and MAM Rio, among others.

Wallace Ferreira is a choreographer, performer, and visual artist. With a degree in dance from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and Parque Lage, and a residency at the Inclusartiz Institute, she received the ImPulsTanz Award for Young Choreographers (2022) and the FOCO ARTRIO Award (2024), and was named Artist in Focus at MITbr2025. Her work consists of studies of social codes choreographed by dissident bodies.