A Fire Ignited

There have been many memorable opening scenes in many memorable movies that have stuck with me. I’m thinking of 2001: A Space Odyssey with its Thus Spake Zarathustra music score, Woody Allen’s Manhattan with scenes of New York framed by Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, the filmed-from-above umbrella choreography in Umbrellas of Cherbourg. There was the unforgettable Statue of Christ suspended from a flying helicopter in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the suspense of the car driving with a bomb in its truck in Orson Welles A Touch of Evil, the opening dance scene in West Side Story. (Worth taking the time to check them all out on Youtube— just put “opening scene” and then name the movie.)

 

But I think the one that impacted me the most was the opening to Black Orpheus when a dancer breaks through the screen credits and the camera lifts up to an entire boat of people dancing Samba as it comes into Rio. That was one of the moments when the world stopped and I sat mouth open thinking “This. This is what I want. This is what I want to be part of.”

 

And that’s exactly what it was like last night, my first on this Brazil trip, when my hosts took me to neighborhood Samba rehearsal. A few hundred people singing and dancing while a few dozen more accompanied on percussion and cavinquinho stringed instruments. Such energy! Such joy! Such connection! We were all on the boat to paradise. 

I believe I was in college when I saw Black Orpheus for the first time and had no inkling that I would later witness this kind of community celebration in India, Bali, Japan, Ireland, Bulgaria, Spain, Ghana, South Africa, New Orleans and yes, Brazil. Some of many places where people put music and dance in their proper places— at the heart of communal celebration, ceremony and ritual. I had no idea that I would try to create and re-create these kind of celebrations at a school for a 45-year period—including an annual samba contest! But that is exactly what I did, that spark from the opening scene of that Black Orpheus film igniting a fire that yet continues to burn brightly the San Francisco School almost five years since I left the school. (And each year before the contest, I showed the film to Middle Schoolers. And pre-videos/ DVD’s and streaming, I did so by tracking down a 16-millimeter version and a projector that a neighbor of the school head had!!)

 

And thanks to the life that followed, all doors opened to bring me back here to Brazil (my 5^th time) where I’m watching a workshop from one of my former Orff Level III student’s as he expertly gets a group of 40 teachers playing the Pink Panther movie theme on Boomwhackers! What a world!