Using buckets, water & soap, the performers in Lavagem (Portuguese for “washing”) explore the action of cleaning as a performative and political gesture. The performers produce images with bubbles, suggesting a dreamlike world, yet by its very nature the soap is also a source of frustration which stops them from staying upright. The process of scrubbing now also becomes an investigation of the identities who are cornered to perform certain tasks in our societies, something that became even more evident with the pandemic, in Brazil and beyond.

Alice Ripoll & CIA Rec dissect the polarised reality of Brazilian society where contact between different sections of the population remains extremely tenuous. The performers come from the favelas, the shantytowns within Brazilian cities, and have a very personal connection to the topic: Their mothers and grandmothers worked as cleaners their whole lives. Lavagem asks the questions: What actually needs to be cleaned? The houses, the dirt in the rooms? Or the sophisticated strategies that aim to make some people become invisible?