The Old Man’s Baiar: corpographies of an Afro-Maranhão vodum as creative reverberation

Abstract

This study proposes to articulate reflections on the Black body, the Afro-Maranhão religion, and Afro dance based on the creative process of artist Toy Acóssi, who, inspired by vodum myths and rituals, dances in Tambor de Mina and interweaves his movements into an autobiographical poetics that outlines the creation of the Jinõn scenic experiment. The shared narratives permeate a creative bodyography that coexists in the Afro-diasporic cultural matrices of Maranhão and extends the connection between the sacred; the material and the invisible; the contemporary and the tradition that relate in a timeless way the Afro connection that penetrates the ancestral roots of an artist’s dance and his writing to the stage.