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February 2014 / Number 20

 

The Egun That Saved Florida’ © 2013, Mark Steven Greenfield

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


SACATAR CO-FUNDED FELLOWSHIPS IN 2014

LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL PARTNERSHIPS BRING NEW RESIDENTS TO SACATAR

 
 
Through some of our institutional partners,  BRAZILIAN and AFRICAN artists may currently apply for Sacatar Fellowships. Please access the APPLICATION page to find full information about how to apply.
 
Find below some partnerships that have already announced (or will announce soon) the awarded artists of Sacatar co-funded Fellowships for 2014.

THE BIENAL DA BAHIA

 
The Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia (MAM-BA) will host the third ‘Bienal da Bahia’, forty-six years after the second, which the dictatorship then in power shut down the first week.  The third biennale will be the cultural centerpiece of the upcoming World Cup.  We are proud to announce a strategic partnership with MAM-BA through which artists and curators will come to Bahia during the two months preceding the Bienal, which opens May 29 and will run through September 7. The invited artists will prepare site-specific installations in the metropolitan region and the curators will provide critical commentary and analysis about the development of the Bienal itself. Currently scheduled for short-term Sacatar residencies are Omar Salomão, Charbel Boutros, Eustáquio Neves, Giselle Beiguelman, Bitu Cassundé, Icaro Lira and Lisette Lagnado, with others soon to be announced.
 

SACATAR / CULTURAL EXCHANGE INTERNATIONAL FELLOWSHIP

In partnership with the Department of Cultural Affairs of the Municipality of Los Angeles, Sacatar annually awards a Cultural Exchange International Fellowship to an artist of any discipline living in Los Angeles County. LADCA will announce the 2014 CEI Fellowships shortly. Recipient of the 2013 CEI Fellowship to Sacatar, the photographer Karolina Karlic (USA)  will be in residence from 17 March through 12 May 2014.  Karolina’s previous photographic work documents the decay of the American auto industry where her immigrant father worked for many years. As an extension of that body of work, Karolina plans to investigate the collapse of the Brazilian rubber industry associated with the early years of the automobile. In addition to visiting ‘Fordlândia’, Henry Ford’s ill-fated rubber plantation in the Amazon, she will document the rubber plantation and ecological park maintained by Michelin in Bahia, three hours south of Sacatar.
 

ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL

 
 
In partnership with the Associação Cultural VideoBrasil, SESC, São Paulo — a biennial video festival that presents work by artists from countries outside of North America and Europe — Sacatar will award a Fellowship in 2014 to the video artist Bakary Diallo (Mali). He was selected for the prize during the 18th Contemporary Art Festival SESC_VideoBrasil (2013). He has shown films in screenings and venues such as Biennale de l’Art Africain Contemporain, Dak’Art (2012), L’Afrique en mouvement, Montréal (2012), 9eme Biennale Africaine de la Photographie, Bamako (2011), 17th Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil (2011), and 20ª Semana de Cine Experimental de Madrid (2010). He attended Le Fresnoy – National Studio of Contemporary Arts (2010). For a taste of Diallo’s compelling imagery, see this VideoBrasil  ‘trailer’:
https://vimeo.com/84624281senha: vbnatv
 
 

MORE PARTNERSHIPS

 
In addition to Residency Prizes awarded through Bienal da Bahia, Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and VideoBrasil,  we conducted three limited selection processes late last year:
 
  1. Dance-UP: for American-based dancers and choreographers.  We received eighty proposals involving one hundred forty-seven dancers.  We did not secure the additional NEA funding we had hoped to receive, but nonetheless Sacatar has awarded four dancers with residencies through the end of 2014 from this applicant pool. Additional Fellowship(s) may be awarded in 2015. 
  2. Fundação Bienal do Mercosul. Through the programme Bienal do Mercosul Residência Artística no Sacatar, we received twenty applications from the sixty-one artists participating of the 9th Bienal do Mercosul | Porto Alegre, Brazil. Sacatar will host  Romy Pocztaruk (Photographer / Brazil) and Anthony Arrobo (Visual Artist / Ecuador) later this year.
  3. UNESCO/Aschberg: for young artists born and living in countries other than Western Europe or the Americas, with bursaries awarded in three disciplines: Visual Arts, Creative Writing and Music Composition.  We received one hundred thirteen applications.  We nominated nine artists to UNESCO in Paris, which awarded the bursaries to Lina El-Mounzer (Creative Writing / Lebanon), Liutauras Janusaitis (Music / Lithuania) and Mario Macilau (Visual Arts / Mozambique).
 
We want to acknowledge and thank our institutional partners in 2014:
  • Africa Centre / Cape Town, South Africa
  • Bienal da Bahia, Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia / Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, in partnership with  the Instituto Hansen Bahia / Cachoeira, Bahia, Brazil
  • Bienal do Mercosul / Porto Alegre, Brazil
  • CCSP, Centro Cultural São Paulo / São Paulo, Brazil
  • Dance-UP / Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
  • FUNCEB, Fundação Cultural do Estado da Bahia / Salvador, Bahia, Brazil
  • Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs /  Los Angeles, California, USA
  • UNESCO-Aschberg Bursary Programme / Paris, France
  • VideoBrasil / São Paulo, Brazil
To see the list of artists to be awarded residencies through these partnerships, please click onPARTNERS /  DONORS.
 
WHEN’S THE  DEADLINE FOR THE NEXT OPEN APPLICATION – UNRESTRICTED BY AGE, NATIONALITY OR DISCIPLINE?
 
We get the above question posed to us frequently. The fact is: we don’t know, but definitely we will post the next application deadline later this year. The 2014 residency sessions are completely booked and we are now making plans and establishing strategic partnerships for 2015.  
 

MAGNOLIA WILSON (New Zealand, 2013) wrote the following poem during her stay at Sacatar in 2013. It was inspired by the friendship she developed with another Fellow in her group, the photographer VILMA SAMULIONYTE (Lithuania, 2013).
 
LEARNING TO FLY
by Magnolia Wilson
 
Today Vilma and I are outjumping in the puddlestrying to believe.
 
We make small inroadsthrough the mud — persistence and    practice the only sureway into magic.
 
There is light growing   under our feet —beneath us the cricket’s call and the frog’s breath           sparks a gap andwe are lifted.
 
We have seen the way thehorses on the beach don’t   touch the ground
 
seen the dogs on the street    traveling in smallairborne packs and
 
even Augusto’s second form   is a bright green                      lizard —
 
he hides in the bushes     shoots above the surfaceof the garden like a practiced arrow.
 
He knows how to                      stay up.
 
Vilma has lifted up too —   has left her shoes behind and
 
embraced the air of the islandbetween her toes — there is fission   in small spaces.
 
You don’t need to touchthe ground for the body
 
of the island to beagainst your                skin.
 

OUR MOST RECENT FELLOWS

 
Find below the list of Fellows from the last two residency sessions in  2013. Click on the artists’ names to open their ALUMNI pages in order to read comments in their own words about their experiences in Bahia and to get a taste of what they produced during their residencies.
 


AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2013 FELLOWS

 

 

Pictured above, the Sacatar Fellows of August / September 2013

 
 


OCTOBER / DECEMBER 2013 FELLOWS

 

Pictured above, the Sacatar Fellows of October / December 2013

 
 

NEWS OF FELLOWS

 
Here is an incomplete sampling of the extraordinary diversity of work currently produced by former Sacatar Fellows, some of which was developed during their residencies. We regret we can’t publish everything we receive from former Fellows, but we love to know what you all are up to, so please stay in touch! (To learn more about our Fellows’ experiences in Bahia in their own untranslated words, click on their individual names below to access their ALUMNI pages.)
 
 
 
CHERYL STRAYED (USA, 2003) completed her first novel while at Sacatar.  Her second book Wildhas been adapted into a movie, to be released in 2015 starring Reese Witherspoon. The film is based on Cheryl’s best-selling memoir of personal crisis and growth as she traveled more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail in the wake of her divorce and her mother’s death. Utterly coincidentally, a good part of the book takes place in Kennedy Meadows, California, a Pacific Crest refueling post in the heart of the Sacatar Wilderness Area where the name Sacatar comes from.
 
 
DAGMAR BINDER (Germany, 2009) will be at an artist residency in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where she will collaborate with a group of women in a village where they raise sheep. The women shear and wash the wool, dye it with natural plants and then spin, knit and weave woolen products.  Dagmar intends to learn the process from them and to teach them felting techniques, showing them another way to work with wool and perhaps developing new products for the women to sell. 
 
 
 
DANIEL GWIRTZMAN (USA, 2003 & 2013) celebrates the fifteenth anniversary of the Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company, with fifteen events over fifteen weeks.  Five of these ‘virtual’ events are works Danny created during his most recent Sacatar residency in 2013.  The celebration will culminate with live performances at BAM’s Fishman Space at BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, USA, from May 30 through June 1. Gwirtzman will team up ‘with his A-list of dancers and longtime collaborators to create an intensely-focused, dynamic, intimate dance full of DGDC hallmarks: virtuosity, charisma, stamina and innovation.’ Here are the screening dates of the ‘virtual season’ of the Brazilian  dance films. For the full schedule of events, please go tohttp://gwirtzmandance.org/schedule/.
 
March 23:   Chegada
Chegada means arrival in Portuguese and marks Gwirtzman’s return to Brazilian soil after exactly ten years.  The fertile natural landscape provides the backdrop of this intimate reunion in this tribute to the beauty of Bahia.
 
March 30:   Pier
The perfect symbiosis of elements: a clear day during the heavy rainy season with good light at high tide.  In Bahia surprises abound and when the elements conspired the collaborative team ran.
 
April 6:   Into The Streets
With wit, great will and a cast of Brazilians, Gwirtzman leads the enthusiastic literally into the streets of  Salvador. Filmed at the time of historic protests this film is a peaceful response to the violent uprisings, encapsulating the Company manifesto that dance is for everyone.
 
April 13:   Crab WorldIt’s a Crab’s World after all.  Finding inspiration from the limitless number of crabs in the sand and water, Gwirtzman imagines life from a crab’s perspective.  An abstract meditation on nature. Directed by former Sacatar employee and frequent collaborator, Rafael Silva de Carvalho.
 
April 20:   Rock The BoatClassical, improvisational and hip-hop forms blend into a picnic of delights when this seaman’s obsession with dance animates a series of empty boats.
 
 

DIANA BLOK (Uruguay > Netherlands, 2003) just returned from 12 days on Curaçao where she was invited to work on a project called Freedom through Generations, an initiative taken by the one and only gallery on the island called Alma Blou. Diana says, “It was very interesting to photograph objects, memories of islanders etc, related to the slavery period.” Diana is now in Brasília working on a project called Eu Te Desafio a Me Amar (I Challenge You to Love Me). This project is a follow-up of SEE THROUGH US, a project she completed in 2008 which focused on sexual diversity in Turkey. With the cooperation of the Dutch Embassy in Brazil, INESC  and UNwomen, Diana is working on a photography/video installation about the ‘fluidity of desire and the freedom of sexual identity in Brazil,’ due mid-May in the National Museum of Brasilia and in Bela Mare in Rio de Janeiro. A publication will follow the exhibition.  Here is a link to a ‘teaser’:  https://vimeo.com/79034975
 
 
GARY POZNER (USA, 2009) is currently a full-time music teacher at the United Nations International School. He recently scored his thirtieth film, a documentary by Robert Kuhn entitled Birth of the Living Dead. George Romero directed the original low-budget horror film class,  Night of the Living Dead.  Kuhn’s documentary places the world-renowned horror film in its historical context with archival footage of the horrors of the Vietnam War and race rebellions in the United States, combined with iconic music of the sixties and new music composed by Gary.
 
 
 
GERALD CYRUS (USA, 2002 & 2011) announces the publication of his new book, Portrait of Camdem in Photographs 2001-2008.
 
“Gerald Cyrus, as a Philadelphia-based photographer, did what many Philadelphia area commuters and tourists do: He took Interstate 676 and used the Delaware Port Authority’s Benjamin Franklin Bridge to cross the Delaware River to enter Camden County, New Jersey…However, he did something that few of those travelers do, and that was to stop in the city of Camden and walk through its various neighborhoods and districts from the riverfront to the inner city…This engagement with the people and spaces of the city, begun in 2001 and continued until 2008, has resulted in a composite portrait in black and white of this small, postindustrial, East Coast city.” —from the introduction by William E. Williams
 
For more information: http://www.blurb.com/b/4695490-gerald-cyrus#about-book
 
 
GIOVANA DANTAS (Brazil, 2007 & 2010) developed the video-installation Insustentável Levezaduring her most recent Sacatar residency.  The resulting exhibit, which has traveled to Salvador and São Paulo, can now be seen at the Caixa Cultural cultural center in Recife, Pernambuco, through February 9.  One of the videos features an ethereal JAMIE DIAMOND (USA, 2010) , who never dreamt so many people would see her floating in a wedding dress in the waters of the Baía de Todos os Santos. You can see images of the exhibition at www.giovanadantas.com and for those of you who speak Portuguese, you can listen to Giovana speak about her experiences at Sacatar,  taped for the Brazilian television program Soterópolis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENrKgsA_rWk
 
 
JANE INGRAM ALLEN (USA, 2002) will be in Taiwan from March 5 to June 2, coordinating once again the Cheng Long Wetlands Project.  She recently completed a three-month residency at the Sitka Center for Art & Ecology, in Otis, Oregon, USA, where DAWN STETZEL (USA, 2007) is on staff as a studio technician.  A recounting of her experiences and photos of what she accomplished at Sitka can be found here: http://janeingramallen.wordpress.com
 
 
LAVONNE MUELLER (USA, 2006) announces the publication of her novel, The Patient Ecstasy of Fraulein Braun, through Opus Books. She says, “I did a lot of the research and the first five chapters at Sacatar. In fact, it’s amazing how much work I got done during my residency–beside the novel chapters, two plays and some poetry.”
  
 
MAJA KLARIC (Croatia, 2012) wrote on January 28: “Following the publication of my poetry collection Quinta Pitanga written while in Itaparica, I was invited to present it (the book, the scholarship, Instituto Sacatar, trip to Brazil…) yesterday on Croatian national television… Though it’s in Croatian and you probably won’t understand much, except Itaparica, Ilha dos Frades and some names…”
 
 
MARCOS ZACARIADES (Brazil > Taipei Artist Village, 2007) has a solo exhibition at the Caixa Cultural of Salvador, opening March 18 at 7 p.m. (local time.)  The exhibition will be open for visitation from March 19 to May 11 (Tue-Sun, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) Given the frequency with which former Sacatar Fellows exhibit at the Caixas Culturais, it may be hard to appreciate just how competitive it is to secure exhibition space at these cultural venues.
 
 
MARISTELA RIBEIRO (Brazil, 2007), with funding from the Banco do Nordeste, is working on a two-year project entitled Casas do Sertão (or Houses of the Brazilian Sertão). Maristela met KAREN OSTROM (Canada > USA, 2013) and immediately included one of her works in an exhibition at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea in Feira de Santana, Bahia: a video that screened at the exhibition opening. Maristela subsequently invited Karen to participate in the Casas do Sertão project, which places contemporary art interventions in dirt-poor communities of the interior. Karen visited one of the communities, Morrinho, and in two weeks made a short animated video in response to her visit to the village. This short film was screened on the side of the church of Morrinho on January 2, 2014. The soundtrack features the frogs of Itaparica. Click on this link to see As Estrelas de Morrinho orThe Stars of Morrinho:  https://vimeo.com/84279910 
 
 
MARK STEVEN GREENFIELD (USA, 2013) will soon wind up his stint as interim director of  Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE).  The Board of Directors of LACE has announced the appointment of Sarah Russin as its next Executive Director, effective February 24, 2014. Concurrently, Mark prepares a retrospective of his work, scheduled for September 2014  at CAAM, the California African-American Museum, in Los Angeles, USA. The openning image in this issue of the Jornal Sacatar shows a piece entitled The Egun That Saved Florida, which Mark finished during his residency session at Sacatar.
 
 
 
MATT SHERIDAN (USA, 2012) returns to Bahia in April 2014. With funding provided by SECULT, the cultural department of the state of Bahia, Matt will present Contours of Belief (Contornos de Crença), a multi-channel painting-in-motion animation exploring Salvador’s unique “spiritualized structuralism.” The installation, scheduled for April 26 at a public location yet to be announced,  will feature three video projections upon three architectural facades, in sync and in-the-round.  Matt is collaborating with Andrea May, Juninho Costa and Ana Paula Bringel on this abstract animation installation, examining how Candomblé re-routes construction and traffic throughout Salvador, a city largely without maps.  Matt recently installed new work at Chateau de la Napoule in France and contributed painting-in-motion video to dance music singer Gala for her stage show and world tour.
 
 
PADMA VISWANATHAN (Canada, 2003) announces the publication in Canada and India of her second novel, The Ever After of Ashwin Rao. With a scheduled release date in March 2014, Amazon.com has this to say: “From internationally acclaimed New Face of Fiction author Padma Viswanathan, a stunning new work set among families of those who lost loved ones in the 1985 Air India bombing, registering the unexpected reverberations of this tragedy in the lives of its survivors. A book of post-9/11 Canada, The Ever After of Ashwin Rao demonstrates that violent politics are all-too-often homegrown in North America but ignored at our peril.”
 
 
PARISA KARIMI (Germany, 2011) reports “my memories are still very lively as if it was yesterday. The energy I brought back with me was inspiring and innovating my style of work. It was the best things happening to me in my artist career. This year I produced a solo show called SAFAR which was shown on international Festivals. It is a 55 min, multi-media physical theatre show, which was born in Sacatar. Next year I want to bring this show to Brazil, where the first ideas started.”www.parisakarimi.de
 
 
PINAR YOLACAN (Turkey, 2006) is back in Itaparica after completing a residency at FAAP in São Paulo. She plans to work with local models to continue her most recent series of photographs, which she began in São Paulo where she worked with large women who dance in the city’s samba ‘schools.’
 
 
REYNOLD REYNOLDS (USA, 2006) is currently a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome.  You can see some of his recent work, The Lost, shown on seven loops at:https://vimeo.com/album/2628278. The password is: thelost7channels. 
 
 
 
SCOTT WALLACE (USA, 2013): In November 2013, his book The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes was published in Portuguese as Além da Conquista.  After his Sacatar residency last year, he headed to Marabá in the Brazilian state of Pará.  The article that resulted from that trip, In the Blood Jungle, appears in the February 2014 issue of the  Smithsonian Magazine.
 
 
    

SHELLEY MILLER (Canada, 2004) has had her work featured in the following books:
  • The Popular History of Graffiti: From the Ancient World to the Present, by Fiona McDonald, Skyhorse Publishing, 2013
  • Creaticity: Creative Expression in Contemporary Cities, by Poch and Poch, Concept and compilation by Kognitif.Varios Publishing, 2013
She recently exhibited work in Waterloo, Australia, where she continued to draw upon the heritage of Portuguese tiles in colonial Brazil. Shelley created the work pictured above for  Sugar, Sugar, a  group exhibition  of female artists who work with sugar, at the Brenda May Gallery.  This hand-painted sugar tile mural depicts imagery relating to the force labour trade between South Pacific Islands and the Australian mainland, where islanders were forced to work in the sugar cane fields. The mural was installed outside the gallery building for one month in October 2013. 
 
 
SOLANGE LIMA (Brazil > France, 2005) is back in Bahia with her husband Vincent and their one-year-old baby Nara to orchestrate the 4th annual FESTIT, the festival of street performers in Itaparica.  This annual festival of clowns, acrobats and performers from around the world will once again grace the streets of Itaparica from March 14-16.
 
 
 
STACEY STEERS (USA, 2006): The short animated film and installation that Stacey began to work on while at Sacatar, Night Hunter, continues its travels around the United States. The video installation is on view at the Boise Art Museum in Idaho, USA, from 27 January – 8 June 2014.  Stacey is currently a Creative Capital Fellow while she works on her next animated film, which expands upon the visual language she developed at Sacatar. 
 
 
    
 
VIGA GORDILHO (Brazil, 2004) recently launched two books, largely drawn on her experiences as a Sacatar Fellow on the island of Itaparica.  BTS em retalhos roughly translates as The Patchwork of the Baía de Todos os Santos, a project conducted with the graduate students of the Universidade Federal da Bahia, and featuring on its cover an example of the community-based work developed during the project, displayed on the pier of the Instituto Sacatar.  The second book, O Vestido Fuxiqueiro, is a children’s book directly inspired by the work she began at Sacatar and by the craftswomen with whom she worked in the surrounding communities.  The book, which has an untranslatable title, tells the story of the creation of a dress made of fuxicos, small bunched circlets of cloth. The title becomes untranslatable because  fuxico also means ‘gossip,’ which accompanies the creation of the fuxico dress.
 
 
WALMOR CORREIA (Brasil, 2007) has received the prestigious Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, one of just thirteen artists to receive this honor in 2014. He will be in Washington, DC, USA, from February 24 to April 3.
 
 
 
YOKO INOUE (Japan > USA, 2011) has a solo show, Mandala Flea Market Mutants,  from 24 January through 27 July 2014 at the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois, Champaign /  Urbana.  From the catalog: “Inoue presents a largely ceramic installation that transforms the gallery space into a labyrinth of assembled objects, displayed like vending booths derived from traditional Japanese temple fairs. She is interested in the cultural process of assimilation and its effect on the value and form of objects as their symbolism changes into something new. Inoue investigates how cultural symbols acquire new meaning beyond their original context when absorbed and circulated within a new context.”
 

LAST MINUTE NEWS

 
 

‘La Trinca’ (The Holy Trio) © 2010, Edgar Clement


While not a former Sacatar Fellow, SABRINA GLEDHILL has participated actively on the board of the Instituto Sacatar in Bahia, Brazil, since 2009. She has contributed to the upcoming exhibition,Sinful Saints and Saintly Sinners at the Margins of the Americas, which will be at the Fowler Museum, UCLA, in Los Angeles, California, USA, from 29 March through 20 July 2014.  Sabrina helped organise the Brazilian portion of the exhibition, focusing on Zé Pelintra, and contributed an essay about Zé Pelintra and ‘malandragem’ to the exhibition catalog. While a Portuguese-English dictionary translates ‘malandro’ as ‘scoundrel’ or ‘crook’, there is no English word that replicates ‘malandragem,’ which is resonant with underhanded, dubious and yet insidiously clever overtones. 
 

SACATAR AT THE PANCADA GRANDE WATERFALL

 
 

 

Sacatar brings artists from around the world to Itaparica, Bahia, Brazil, and yet most of our staff has traveled very little, inside or outside of Bahia. In most years, we award one staff member with a trip inside Brazil: to Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo or the natural wonder of the waterfalls at the Foz de Iguaçu. This year we decided to take the entire staff and their families to an extraordinary but virtually unknown nature preserve right here in Bahia: Pancada Grande. MARK STEVEN GREENFIELD (USA, 2013) left the staff a very generous tip and he heartily endorsed our suggestion that his tip serve as ‘down payment’ for a staff trip to the falls. We left Itaparica in a rented bus at eight in the morning on February 1. Edson, one of our security staff, brought a drum and a pandeiro (tambourine) and suggested we bring two more from the Sacatar collection.  From the moment the bus left, the samba began. It did not let up for a minute, not for the three hours it took to drive from Itaparica to Pancada Grande. Augusto, our general manager, became the principal sambista, drawing on his enormous repertoire of cantigas. Everyone was clapping and dancing the entire way.
 
    
 
We pulled into the parking lot of the ecological park, just as it began to rain.  We waited a few minutes, then descended into the mist that still fell, but then a glorious sun broke through and scattered the clouds. Everyone was taken aback by the beauty of the place, a universal image of the Garden of Eden. And that was before we walked the kilometer to the falls. Pancada Grande is a perfect waterfall for an excursion. The path leads to the base of the towering, thundering falls, where there is a placid pool with a sandy bottom not three feet deep.  Beyond that pool, the fierce current of the river carves a deeper channel for the stronger swimmers. By the pool there is a ledge you can ease onto and into a brain-pummeling shower. Our cook Márcia incarnated an ecstatic Oxum; she draped herself on a rock beneath that shower, wearing her sunglasses like a very ripe Lolita. She stayed there for at least an hour. We all hiked to the top of the falls, where a beautiful trail follows the river, deeper into the fecundity of the mata atlântica, a vestige of the forest that once stretched along the entire coast of Brazil. A pier extends into the river at the base of the falls. In the mid-afternoon, all of the men suddenly found themselves congregated at the end of the pier and broke out into a ragged and outrageous samba de roda, aswirl in the mist and nearly drowned out by the din of the falls. We expected that the ride home would be a quiet somnolent time and indeed half of us did doze, but the other half kept the samba going all the way home. As we dropped people off along the way, the refrain was universal: let’s do this again next year!