In this solo, Wellington Gadelha has mobilised his experience as a  dancer and militant, in his native favela near Fortaleza, to denounce  techno-racial inequalities and the sharing of territories resulting from  segregations. Marrying the poetic with the political, he sees his  black, male body as a site of subjectivation exposed to daily violence, a  “Russian-roulette-body” in his own words. Gente de Lá thus  introduces an urgent atmosphere, capable of making these struggles  visible, and more generally to establish an anticolonial  counter-narrative. In a total performance, bringing in sound, music,  props, space, time and lighting, Wellington Gadelha approaches each  element as a meaningful materiality, with which he engages a gestural  dialogue. The piece connects different actions together, with forms of  dissidence, oppositions and tensions, which provide him with an  opportunity to redefine frontiers that attempt to enclose him. In this  forbidden game, he is the one who ends up pressing the trigger.

Source: program of the CND

Wellington Gadelha is a Brazilian artist and militant, and founder of  the platform Afrontamento (AfFROnting). As a performer, visual and sound  artist, he mobilises both his body and technology to express his  political-ethical preoccupations. He closely collaborates with  collectives on the themes of human rights, peripheral cultures and black  youth. After appearing in a large number of festivals, in Brazil and  abroad, Wellington Gadelha was awarded the Rumos Itaú Cultural prize  with Gente de Lá.

Since 2001, the National Center for Dance (CND) has been making recordings of its shows and educational programming and has created resources from these filmed performances (interviews, danced conferences, meetings with artists, demonstrations, major lessons, symposia specialized, thematic arrangements, etc.).