Dancing Makes Life Bearable For Children -- Jelon Vieira Shares His Concern About Brazil's Needy Children Through His Art

In Brazil's glittering cities, throwaway street children make their lives bearable by dancing at the end of the day. In Seattle, school children are dancing to those same Brazilian rhythms to learn something about the hard young lives so far away.

This week, 100 students, plus a handful of youths from Atlantic Street Center, took turns dancing in the Washington Middle School band room and gym.

They were the same age as street children in Brazil. The difference was these local kids looked well-scrubbed and healthy. They were well-behaved. And they were going to school - a clean, warm, safe place where people care about them.

They were finding out about music and dance and another culture in workshops held by Jelon Vieira's 14-member DanceBrazil. The company presents Vieira's "Pivete," about his nation's dead-end kids, beginning today in Meany Theater.

Ten students, chosen from lecture-demonstrations here all week, will play street youth at the Meany shows, moving among the audience, begging money for food, "dying" of AIDS, doing whatever it takes for affection.

Inspired by Jorge Amado's novel, "Capitaes da Areia," showing how Bahia's throwaway youth turn to music, dance and the martial-art capoeira to make life bearable, Vieira is bringing his concerns over Brazil's needy children to the United States and Europe, via his art.

He believes pressure from other nations on its government may force Brazil to institute basic human rights, even some luxuries U.S. kids take for granted.

"I researched this piece for six months," said Vieira. "When I first went back to Rio, eight kids sleeping on the street were killed by a police death squad, and it was all over the headlines."

Nothing came of it. Some citizens even applauded the action against kids so impoverished and unwanted they steal, sell themselves, kill to stay alive.

"Then I went to Bahia," the Bahia native continued, "and six kids get killed by police and it's not even in the paper. It's that common.

"In doing this piece, I am doing my part to make the world a better place for the kids," said Vieira, a master in modern dance as well as capoeira. "I will tell the kids here they are helping. Educating people."

Young people here are light years from their counterparts in Brazil - 70 percent of whose population is under 30, and 60 percent of which lives below the poverty level, Vieira said. The monthly income is $100 for 150 million.

Before the lecture-demo, Vieira asked if any students knew about Brazil or its music. No hands. When he asked if anyone knew about capoeira, before he demonstrated a berimbau string-stick-gourd instrument, one hand went up.

But after two hours of singing and clapping led by the four musicians, and of rhumba and other ment, one hand went up.

But after two hours of singing and clapping led by the four musicians, and of rhumba and other loose-limbed steps, led by three dancers and Vieira, the youngsters were flushed, smiling, trying out the bumps, swivels and shoulder pops on their own.

"It's nice. I like it!," said eighth-grader Stanislaw Otieno, a football and baseball player who also has appeared in school plays. Otieno was chosen for the Meany Hall shows.

Most of the youngsters Vieira chose for the performances this weekend are African American. That's because 90 percent of Brazil's street kids are of African heritage, from slaves imported beginning in the 1500s.

When he showed his new work privately in Brazil, Vieira felt in danger; the government and tourist industry disliked his portraying of negatives.

But when he previewed the work last week at Bryn Mawr College, he said people called him the next day, saying, "Tell us what we can do to help!"

He hopes audiences here will be moved similarly - to write letters to government and human-rights agencies.

"Money is never the answer," he said. "It always goes in someone's pocket. Education is. And condoms, birth control. Internship programs."

He said the music DanceBrazil plays, including the score for "Pivete," slang for "street kids" - is created by ear, not written. And all the lyrics are Portuguese, Brazil's language. Vieira choreographed with Nem Brito using modern dance and theater forms synthesized with folkloric idioms, to music by Toti Gira and Carlos Brito.

"Pivete," and the workshops for inner-city kids, were co-commissioned by the University of Washington World Dance at Meany and the Carver Community Cultural Center in San Antonio, Tex., where the work goes next.

Vieira said it was ironic, considering the peril they are in, that at the end of each day, Brazil's kids "are the happiest-looking. They dance, sing, play-fight, always with big smiles."

His workshops and the performance are designed to show that in cultures around the world, dance is life-affirming, even a means to survive.

The 75-minute "Pivete" continues through Saturday in Meany Theater (543-4880). ------------------------------------------------------------------- Where to write

Some places to write about the plight of Brazil's street children:

-- United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), 3 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017.

-- Americas Watch, 485 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10017.

-- Center for International Policy, 1755 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., Suite 324, Washington, D.C. 20036.

-- Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, 1889 F St. N.W., Suite LL2, Eighth Floor, Washington, D.C. 20006.

-- Diplomatic Representative of Brazil in the United States of America, 3006 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20008.