Support Ebony Repertory Theatre with a tax-deductible donation today! Scan the QR code or visit www.ebonyrep.org/support.htm for more information.
Nicolina Scibona
VIVERBRASIL
Rezas e Folhas
“REZAS e FOLHAS” (“Prayers and Leaves”) is where tradition and revolution brew into a collective reimagining of healing futures. Grounded in Vera Passos’s unique creative approach, which masterfully blends traditional Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous dances and rhythms with experimental choreography, and poignant storytelling, Viver Brasil: “Rezas e Folhas” seeks to uplift our sacred connection to earth and the Black and Indigenous knowledge from the Caboclo and Orixá practices that preserve this wisdom.
ABOUT VIVER BRASIL
Viver Brasil, founded in 1997 by Co-Artistic Directors Linda Yudin and Luiz Badaró, Viver Brasil is a legacy-bearing Los Angeles institution with deep and ongoing ties to Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. Viver Brasil creates culturally rooted and aesthetically bold Afro-Brazilian dance theater with its signature blend of ancestral practices, street styles, and live music–addressing contemporary issues of racial and social inequity towards a radically re-imagined future. In 2022, Vera Passos was appointed as Co-Artistic Director. In 2024, Viver Brasil received its second National Dance Project Production Award from the New England Foundation for the Arts to create Rezas e Folhas by Vera Passos. The work will tour nationally and internationally beginning in the Fall of 2025.
Vera Passos, Co-Artistic Director/Choreographer, is one of Salvador, Bahia’s most elegant and eloquent contemporary Afro-Brazilian dancers. The Los Angeles Times called Passos “exotic, strong but sylphlike.” Passos was a principal dancer for the acclaimed Bale Folclórico da Bahia, touring throughout Brazil, Europe, Asia, the US, and South America for ten years, and also performed with the Jorge Silva Dance Company in Salvador, Bahia. Passos participated in the first annual Viver Brasil Institute in Los Angeles as a teaching artist and visiting performing artist. In 2015, she premiered her first full-length work for Viver Brasil, Peace Transcends, at the Aratani Theatre in Los Angeles. In 2016, Passos choreographed and performed in the company’s Bloco Afro Spectacle/ Motumbaxé for the Olympic Celebration at the Hollywood Bowl. In 2017, she premiered Pra Onde O Samba Me Leva (Where the Samba Takes Me) to a sold-out audience as part of Viver Brasil’s 20th-anniversary concert, Agô Ayo Spirits Rising. Passos will premiere Viver Brasil’s newest work, funded by the New England Foundation for the Arts/National Dance Project Production grant, Rezas e Folhas, in the Fall of 2025. She divides her time between Los Angeles and Salvador, Bahia. She is the founding artistic director and visionary leader of her Casa de Cultura SoMovimento, a groundbreaking cultural arts center embracing Passos’ vision that arts are for all with a deep commitment to the African diaspora and her Afro-Brazilian heritage. She holds a Master’s in Dance from the Federal University of Bahia. Passos states, “My culture is my inspiration. When I dance, my feet speak with the earth bringing ancestral messages of joy, resistance, healing, love, and transformation and the power of elder wisdom that guide my journey and the world around me in its present state.”
Luiz Badaró, Co-Founder/ Artistic Director, is a critically acclaimed master dancer, choreographer, percussionist, and educator born and raised in Salvador, Bahia. He has choreographed and performed for over thirty years in Brazil, Europe, Africa, Japan, and the United States. Badaró’s exalted choreography is inspired by Afro-Brazilian culture’s traditional and contemporary worlds. In 2007, he was awarded a Creation to Performance Grant by the James Irvine Foundation for the recreations of his signature works, Navio Negreiro and A
Lagoa de Abaete, performed to a sold-out performance at the Ford Theatres. In 2009, he won a Lester Horton Dance Award for “Outstanding Achievement in Music for Dance” for Viver Brasil’s 2008 So Moved/In Motion.
Along with Yudin, Badaró received the prestigious “Excellence in Teaching” award from the board of directors of Dance Resource Center of Greater L.A./Lester Horton Dance Awards 2009. He teaches Afro-Brazilian dance in several arts education programs in schools throughout Los Angeles County. His rigorous teaching practice amalgamates his deep-rooted enthusiasm for sharing and passing on his Afro-Brazilian heritage through his signature Dança Afro classes and his relationship with live music.
Linda Yudin, Co-Founder/Artistic Director, holds a master’s degree in Dance (Ethnology) from UCLA and has devoted 35 years to researching, performing, and teaching Afro-Brazilian dance. Her work is embodied in Viver Brasil’s 21st-century expression of Afro-Brazilian dance theater, community engagement, and international cultural exchange. Yudin has collaborated with Brazilian choreographers and mentors company members as emerging artistic contributors. In addition, she has directed sixteen premiere works and led national and international tours with Viver Brasil. Her teaching practice includes a deep regard for honoring the wisdom of her elder and contemporary teachers, a commitment to the uniqueness of each student, and providing cultural context to the beautiful complexity of Afro-Brazilian dance with live music. She has served on the dance faculties of Santa Monica College and UCLA for over twenty years, was a member of Dance/USA’s board of trustees, was an artist in residence at the Sacatar Foundation on the Island of Itaparica, Bahia, and was recognized by the Brazilian Consulate/Los Angeles for her commitment to creating a living bridge between LA and Salvador, Bahia. She recently co-authored an article with Dr. Margit Edwards, Dancing Orixa Dolls/Dolls of Axé: Honoring the artistry of Dona Detinha de Xango, which appears in Contours On-line Journal, University of Minnesota.
DANCERS/INTERPRETERS
Ajah Hays-Muhammad Amainary Contreras Diana Toledo Justin Porter
Luiz Badaró Michela Melone, Artist Liasion Vera Passos
MUSICIANS
Cody Perkins, Sound Architect Henry Castro, Musical Director, Piano, Percussion
Natalia Spadini, Singer Onier Bacallao, Trumpet, Percussion
Ricky Matute, Percussion Vania Amaral, Special Guest
LIGHTING DESIGNER
Ric Zimmerman
COSTUME DESIGNERS
Eilida Donat, Nong Tomsutipong, Dona Quidinha
PRODUCTION MANAGER
Suellen Ferreira
Viver Brasil invites you to join the company in the Cabaret Room immediately following the performance to celebrate our honorees, Sonia Santos, Iya Fayomi Osundoyin Egbeyemi (Trifari Williams), Awo Fasegun Ogunkeye Adesanya (Earl White), Awo Fanira Ogunleke Adesanya (Hashim Williams), Apetebi Iya Dee (Diane White)
Rezas e Folhas is made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation, and is also supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.