The Dog without Feather: The Artistic Message of Social Transformation Intrinsic in the Deborah Colker´s Spectacle

The Dog Without Feather is the new spectacle by reputed Deborah Colker´s dance company, which was inspired by a homonym poem by João Cabral de Melo Neto symbolized by a dog whose image is a metaphor of what the poet and, posteriorly, the choreographer wanted to address.

The Dog Without Feather, mistreated, starving, miserable and covered by mud is a symbolic representation of the man of particular Brazilian region, which is characterized by poverty and an inhospitable nature. Such nature is also a metaphor of social life that is marked by misery and consequently human indignity – something inconceivable and inadmissible; applying words of the choreographer herself.

This actual work corresponds to a proposal of sociological analyzes of such spectacle with emphasis to the metaphors and the symbolic representation inherent to it. Metaphors ranging from the poem that provides the name and the aesthetics support to the choreography to the mud, which is represented both the costumes and the rhythm of manguebeat music.

Such metaphors add to other symbolic representations combined to innumerous subtle and complementary elements that, together, constitute a complex and provoking interpretation of Brazil today. Interpretation that outlines a sensible and pungent criticism, which is able of communicating and mobilizing the necessary strength in the public to transform social reality. Reality that annoyed both the author of the poem when writing it and the choreographer nowadays and consequently the public that represent a broader universe in which a whole nation is reflected.