Paper short abstract:

Folia dos Reis is an old rite, still being recreated, what are those changes, how its performed and included in the local society of a traditional Favela in Rio de Janeiro. Coming from different areas the rite is being performed influencing the society and being influenced by them.

Paper long abstract:

A traditional celebration from Europe arrives in Brazil 400 years ago and still today survives in different cities and communities and also arrives in favelas(slum) adding elements from different realities. The rules of 3 Kings are clear but when it interacts with the local community the rite and the place reality mixes together.

The rite got elements from the natives, African and European and perform an old catholic celebration, and was performed in different parts of Brazil and reinvented in the poverty areas, where you have violence, lower life conditions, keeping the influences of the original one, getting new elements from the contemporary society.

What are those changes, what is the new identity, how its still getting elements, and recreating in a different field. The rites have challenges of modernity, religious intolerance, and how it makes an act of cultural resistance, how it influences the local society, and vice versa. To be performed in some places of that community the participants of the rite need to ask permission from different local powers: drug dealers, militia, sometimes the police or the state.

What are the borders between the community and the performers, how and when that border is braked and the community and the performers play together and interact, creating a moment that those two worlds become only one.