With such a nice nickname, Dutão (big overpass) is possibly the most beloved viaduct in Rio do Janeiro. It is where the Baile Charme takes place in Madureira, a neighborhood in the north zone of Rio. The party has been going on for over 30 years and transformed the Viaduto Mayor Negrão de Lima into a dance floor that, every Saturday night, receives about two thousand people – proof of the affective relationship that can arise between a hostile road work and the local community.
Music: R&B — more contemporary than traditional (and hip hop, too). You hardly hear sacred monsters from the 1970s like Temptations, Al Green, Isley Brothers, Funkadelic, Ohio Players or Frankie Beverly. On the other hand, a lot of Snoop Dogg, Rihanna, Beyoncé and Brian McKnight, as well as lesser known names like Ja Rule, Kelis, MC Lyte, Tiara Thomas, Wildchild and Bad Rabbits. There are also several DJs, either residents or guests: Guto DJ, DJ Flash, DJ Espada, DJ Loopy, DJ A, Fabio R&B, in addition to resident DJ Corello, who balances “modern and classic R&B” on his nights.
Prom price list: admission until midnight: free! Then: R$ 10. Beer: 2. Water: 1. Vodka: 1. Coca: 2. Energy drink: 1.
Knowing that Madureira is considered a stronghold of Rio samba, Dutão sometimes welcomes samba musicians, too. In the Google Street View photo, for example, you can see a poster announcing a concert by Diogo Nogueira, son of sambista João Nogueira (by the way, the first album that João released in the late 1960s, was a compact with the title Alô, Madureira).
The floor emerged at the initiative of the carnival block called Pagonete de Madureira, which still uses the space during Carnival. According to DJ Corello, the charm of Baile Charme is a different music if compared to R&B and funk: “Funk songs have a strong beat, while Charme is slower and has a more refined melody. In dance, funk has a more sensual appeal. Charme has its roots in hustle, the style danced by John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, but it is more elaborate. ”
Charme comes from a tendency to slow the electrifying cadence of R&B by adopting more elegant choreographic movements inspired by North American synchronized dances, such as the Electric Slide of the 1990s. According to journalist Catherine Osborn, Charme is a hybrid, Brazilian-American choreography which, although similar to Eletric Slide, incorporates the rhythm and inflection of samba and pagode into elaborate routines, then mixing them with steps that are common in the United States (these including a certain shuffle-hops, a knee-swiveling of the Brooklyn, and yet another, the Grapevine).
According to a 2011 post on the blog of architect Ana Luiza Nobre, “the space is basically formed by two contiguous enclosures defined by the structure of the viaduct and its access handles. A sheet metal enclosure surrounds the area. The ticket is paid and there are restrooms at the opposite end (no water, but toilet paper at will). There are also tables and chairs made of red plastic, where few people sit, and that’s it. The DJ stands before three colored pillars (one of them is pink). And the regulars are men and women – more men than women, and mostly blacks – who dress neatly to go dancing under the overpass, to the sound of an electronic version of black music from the 70s, in a collective choreography whose steps most know, intuit or at least follow (who? it’s difficult to know).”
Baile Charme has a very similar black music brother in Belo Horizonte, where MC Duels take place every month under another musical overpass, the Viaduto Santa Tereza, which has become a place of resistance and a meeting point of the city’s rapper culture. This improbable sponsorship of black music and dance by a violent road infrastructure is certainly a common denominator that brings these dances together. And perhaps it delineates a future network of cultural facilities under collateral spaces that were spontaneously appropriated. Who knows in Recife, a city of a thousand bridges and viaducts (of “rivers, bridges and overdrives, impressive mud sculptures”), there is a board that shelters the incredible duels amid the coco de embolada rappers?
See also the post on the exhibition Other Territories at Viaduto das Artes.
Written from the post Dutão, by Ana Luiza Nobre (blog Posto 12, posto12.blogspot.com), from O Charme de Madureira by João Carvalho (Piauí magazine no. 108), and from the report Hip-hop met Rio de Janeiro and never stepped back, by Catherine Osborn (The World, 11/20/2017). Photos: Catherine Osborn, newspaper O Dia.
