October 6, 2019

Chatterjea delivers closing ABRACE keynote in São Paulo, Brazil

Ananya Chatterjea, artistic director, Ananya Dance Theatre, delivered the closing keynote address at the 10th Scientific Meeting of the Brazilian Association of Performing Arts Research and Graduate Studies (ABRACE). Held at The University of Campinas (Unicamp) in São Paulo, Brazil, this 10th international conference, Oct. 1-4, focused on performing arts and human rights. Unicamp is one of Brazil’s largest and top-ranked universities.

About the event: 

Performing Arts and Human Rights 
According to the UN, human rights are rights inherent in all human beings, regardless of race, gender, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion or any other condition. They include the right to life and liberty, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to work and education, and many others. This institutionalized set of human rights and guarantees has as its basic purpose the respect for its dignity, through its protection against the discretion of state power and the establishment of minimum living conditions and the development of the human personality.

The purpose of ABRACE’s current management will be the discussion, with its associate body, on Performing Arts and Human Rights.

Following this focus, the 10th ABRACE Scientific Meeting will have as its primary purpose the discussion and problematization of the face-to-face arts in line with human rights. We know that art emanating and produced in one epoch and of a people is an integral part of culture, and that this cultural action has meaning only from the freedom of expression that is an integral part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in its Article XIX that versa:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes the freedom to have opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas by any means and regardless of borders. ”

Thus, the arts, and more specifically, the presential arts, depend on respect for human rights for their own full existence. But beyond that, we believe that the performing arts can also play a key role in the realization, awareness and robustness of the practice of human rights in the world, as well as having the power to produce effects of resistance when these rights are threatened by political conjunctures. , cultural or economic.

The purpose and purpose of this scientific meeting will be to discuss human rights in relation to the arts, and more specifically to the presential arts in their positive character of effectiveness, resilience, resistance and awareness.