Lia de Itamaracá, queen of ciranda: hand in hand with history

Abstract

We intend to understand in the musical, dancing, and daily practices of the cirandeira Lia de Itamaracá, a way of living or cultural form as a practice of itself, antagonistic to the techniques of biopower, or biopolitics that spread and cross us, a counter-conduct. Having as a methodological assumption the cultural history and Foucauldian concepts, to seek the realization of libertarian actions as a break with the corporeity, socially and culturally in force. Using the history of Ciranda and Lia with her work, as a composer, performer, “cirandeira” and ciranda master, actress and citizen, we conclude that coco and ciranda, coming from the manifestations and popular practices of religious yards and profane parties of enslaved blacks, practitioners of musical, dancing, and interation forms, marginalized from batuque and calundu, circumscribe the tradition to which Lia is linked. Providing a body as a support and structure of the values propagated by the daily practice of dance, it ethically and aesthetically promotes the culture of the singular and social body, implying the care of the self and the self-constitution of the subject in the use of pleasures. Decelerating the time of capital, unites the emergence of an ethics of the self with the continuous presence of the other, elaborating an aestheticization of existence.