Festival Parallèle 15, Bruits Marrons

February 7 at 21:00
Ballet national de Marseille, Studio Franchetti

Danse
Duration: 1h30

In co-presentation with CCN – Ballet National de Marseille

In Bruits Marrons, Calixto Neto engages in a dialogue with Julius Eastman, translating one of the Afro-American musician’s iconic pieces—Evil Ni**er—through the body. Accompanied by six performers, the Brazilian choreographer updates this percussive and radical work, far ahead of its time.

Outraged by the cultural Eurocentrism, homophobia, and racism of his contemporaries, American composer Julius Eastman is known for integrating his convictions into his classical compositions. Once an academic and a figure of New York’s experimental music scene, this radical and dilettante pioneer ended his life in solitude and complete destitution. With a view to reparation, Bruits Marrons offers a choreographic rereading of the composer’s protest work. After exploring samba in Feijoada, Calixto Neto and his dancers now take on Eastman’s style: a mix of sophisticated contemporary music and wild, unconventional arrangements. In the same spirit, he treats the piano as a percussive instrument, inviting the performers to subvert this symbol of classical music.The piece encourages listening to Julius Eastman as the heir of an artistic lineage rooted in Africa, which gave birth to blues, jazz, and R&B in the United States, but also to maracatu, reggae, and gwoka further south. Drawing on the composer’s freedom as an example, Calixto Neto gathers a community of queer, immigrant, and racialized bodies to rethink emancipation in the present. Both an aesthetic and political gesture, Bruits Marrons offers a symbolic family to the late musician, a profoundly misunderstood figure of his time.

Biographie

Originally from Recife, Brazil, and based in France since 2013, Calixto Neto trained in theater at the Federal University of Pernambuco, then in dance with the Grupo Experimental de Dança, before completing a master’s in choreography at ex.e.r.ce, CCN Montpellier. During his studies, he created the solo petites explosions as well as the duo Pipoca with Bruno Freire. In 2018, he was in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts to create his second solo, oh!rage, born from his interest in “peripheral” dances, operating outside institutional circuits. A member of Lia Rodrigues’ company from 2007 to 2013, Calixto Neto has also performed in creations by Anne Collod, Mette Ingvartsen, Ève Magot, and Luiz de Abreu, whose famous piece O Samba do Crioulo Doido he restaged in 2020 at the Panorama Festival at CND – Centre National de la Danse in Pantin. Also in 2020, he produced the films O Samba do Crioulo Doido: règle et compas and Pro Futuro Quilombo.
In 2021, he created Outrar in collaboration with Lia Rodrigues, as well as Feijoada, his first group piece. In 2023, he premiered the solo IL FAUX at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts. Most recently, he created the group piece Bruits Marrons in autumn 2025 for the Festival d’Automne in Paris. Calixto Neto’s work is united by a desire to include diverse bodies and colors on stage and within contemporary artistic landscapes. His highly collective practice seeks to valorize marginalized groups and inscribe their presence into historical narratives.
Calixto Neto is an artist-in-residence at the Scène nationale de Cergy-Pontoise / Val d’Oise for 2024–2026.

Credits

Distribution

Choreography: Calixto Neto
Performers: Shereya, Andrège Bidiamambu, Stanley Ollivier, Isabela Fernandes Santana, Ndoho Ange
Musical direction and performance: Omar Gabriel Delnevo
Assistant choreographer: Carolina Campos
Set design: Morgana Machado Marques
Costumes: Suelem de Oliveira da Silva
Lighting: Eduardo Abdala
Technical direction: Marie Predour
Sound operation: Marie Mouslouhouddine
Production, administration, and touring: Julie Le Gall
Thanks to: Dalila Khatir, Lucila Piffer, Shirley Soa, Rafael Frazão, Jean-David Lemarié

Executive production

VOA

Coproduction

oints communs, Nouvelle scène nationale de Cergy-Pontoise et du Val d'Oise ; Festival d’Automne à Paris ; CND Centre national de la danse ; Charleroi danse – Centre chorégraphique de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles ; Mille Plateaux, CCN La Rochelle ; Centre chorégraphique national de Grenoble dans le cadre de l’accueil-studio – ministère de la culture ; Cndc – Angers dans le cadre de accueil-studio – ministère de la Culture

Support

Adami, Kunstencentrum BUDA (Courtrai), la Ménagerie de verre, Drac Île-de-France – ministère de la Culture within the framework of the partnership and sponsorship of Caisse des Dépôts

Action financée

par la Région Île-de-France

Premiered on

October 7, 2025, at Points Communs, Nouvelle Scène Nationale de Cergy-Pontoise et du Val d’Oise, as part of the Festival d’Automne 2025

Parallèle 15 is about forty artists, performances, visual art exhibitions, screenings, readings, meetings, and partys.

Calixto Neto
Bruits Marrons

2025