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Paper short abstract:

Coloniality shapes everyday lives of Brazilian migrant women. Through the public performance of samba, Brazilian women in Leeds (UK) give back to dance its political sense, in a physical and emotional exercise of cultural resignification of what it means to be a Brazilian woman in the West.

Paper long abstract:

Among the wretched of Brazil, samba is the deepest expression of suffering and also of resistance. Conceived in the forbidden rhythms and prayers that Blacks professed in the secret of senzalas, it has transcended times and spaces.

The history of samba is the story of human and cultural dislocation. It travelled from Africa to the Nordeste. After abolition, it followed the former slaves to the southern cities peripheries; for crossing the seas again towards Europe, in the maelstrom of global economic restructuration and the consequent reconfiguration of migratory fluxes.

In performing samba, the body in motion becomes the community itself in demonstration. Through this long-time-marginalized cultural practice, the oppressed found a way of exorcizing the systemic violence that sustains racist domination and economical exploitation. The role undertaken by women in such a creative celebration is a passionate and subversive exercise of self-affirmation.

Thus, in the city of Leeds, Brazilian women sambam against cultural appropriation that threats to empty samba of its political meanings, reducing women's display to a shabby representation of their complex identities.

No sambar, these women restore their bodies as a powerful symbol which dares the colonial gaze that still objectifying them; therefore, they contest the hypersexualized image of Brazilian women in western imagery.

In doing so, not only they redefine their identities on the move, proving that cultural resistance is also physical, sensitive and affective, but they also create an opportunity of empowerment for other different women, avoiding borders of any kind.