San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Dance instructor an ambassador to Brazilian culture in Bay Area
As the annual Carnaval San Francisco parade came up 24th Street in the Mission District, the energy level always swelled with the appearance of Ginga Brasil — a costumed performance troupe of more than 100 men, women and children, a drum corps and a band on a truck, all dancing and swaying to the samba.
Off to the side, in her own unique costume, with her arms in constant motion as she conducted the dancers, was the troupe’s artistic director, Conceição Damasceno, a dance instructor and choreographer, costume designer and float decorator, community leader and cultural ambassador for all things Brazilian.
Damasceno, who last walked the mile-plus route at Carnaval in 2017 and was waving from a float a year later, had long suffered from lupus, an autoimmune disease. A long decline finally ended on April 24, when Damasceno died at age 61 at her home in North Oakland, said her husband, Nick Harvey.
“One of her greatest gifts was that she could introduce (Brazilian) dance and the culture to Americans,” Harvey said. “She taught people to find inner happiness in their own creative movement and comfort in their own bodies.”
As a bookend to Carnaval on Memorial Day weekend, Damasceno created and directed the SF Bay Brazilian Day/Lavagem Festival, which folds a 45-minute sacred ceremony into an eight-hour party during Labor Day weekend in Berkeley.
Ginga Brasil dances yearround at street fairs and parties centered around Casa de Cultura, a warehouse in West Berkeley connected to a nonprofit arts foundation called BrasArte. Children start in a program called Borboletas (Butterflies). Parents often start out watching the kids before they, too, are absorbed in the spirit of it and enroll in classes.
Damasceno appreciated students who started with nothing. She emigrated from the Brazilian state of Bahia in 1985 with $50 to her name. As the youngest of 12 children whose father died when she was just a few months old, Damasceno was raised amid poverty and hunger in a small town without electricity.
To entertain herself, she “watched shadows by candlelight at night and butterflies in the daytime to imitate the movement,” Harvey said. An Englishman, he was on a post-collegiate walkabout when he met Damasceno in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 1985. Two years later, they visited San Francisco and decided to move there.
She opened her dance studio in Berkeley in 1998, and founded BrasArte two years later as a nonprofit to preserve authentic Brazilian culture and to facilitate cultural exchange. Those two organizations were merged into Casa de Cultura, the Brazilian cultural center and dance studio still operating in Berkeley.
“I hope I help people see that Brazil is not just about beautiful women in bikinis and feathers,” she told The Chronicle in an interview before Carnaval in the late 1990s. “It represents a whole attitude of being happy and relaxed — and Americans need to be relaxed.”
Interest in Brazilian culture hit a frenzy in 1994 when Stanford Stadium was one of the venues for the soccer World Cup. The Brazilian team stayed in Los Altos and played several games en route to winning the Cup at the Rose Bowl.
Graphic designer AnneMarie Praetzel of Berkeley had been a soccer player and seen the games at Stanford and hit the spontaneous street parties afterward. At one soiree, she saw a flyer on a telephone pole advertising a Samba class conveniently located at Bahia Brazil, a bar in San Francisco.
She’d never taken a dance class before and was curious. “In comes this very graceful and stunningly beautiful woman, long arms and legs with a shock of black, wild hair,” Praetzel said. “Her movements were so mesmerizingly beautiful that I was hooked instantly.”
Praetzel ended up studying under Damasceno for 17 years. There was much to learn as Damasceno’s choreography incorporated the flight of birds and the movement of women doing laundry. Praetzel ended up performing in costume during several Carnaval parades.
“Samba is a very difficult dance to do unless you grew up doing it,” Praetzel said. “But (Damasceno) made it so fun and so addictive that I just kept going and going until I got it, eventually.”
There was more to it than Samba. There were parties at Damasceno’s home, and larger street parties at Casa de Cultura. Something was always happening with Ginga Brasil. “There was a very warm and welcoming vibe to it,”
Praetzel said. “There were old people, young people, kids. It was very inclusive. All ages and sizes of people with varying abilities to dance were welcome at her events and her classes.”
Damasceno was born Jan. 2, 1961, in Alagoinhas, a city in Bahia. The family moved to the capital city of Salvador when she was 9, and she began studying folkloric dance traditions. After migrating to Miami and then San Francisco, Damasceno made her first appearance in Carnaval in 1988.
“Her genius is something she brought from Brazil, which is the entire conceptualization of a Carnaval contingent,” said Aida Salazar, an Oakland writer who included Damasceno in her illustrated children’s book “In the Spirit of a Dream: 13 Stories of
American Immigrants of Color.”
“She would be there with her glowing smile and her big hair flowing in the wind with the most graceful arms you’ve ever seen, moving along and flowing and directing.”
Salazar became enthralled when she and her husband, musician John Santos, brought their daughter, Avelina Santos, then 7, to a performance produced by Damasceno at the Casa de Cultura. Afterward Damasceno approached them and suggested Avelina was the right age for the summer day camp offered at the Casa. That was the beginning of five years of dancing and performing for Avelina, followed by her younger brother, Joao. Then their mother became a producer of the Carnaval Ball, the Brazilian Day Festival, and Yemanja
Arts Festival, all affiliated with BrasArte.
“The Brazilian people were always there, but it was also white, Black and Asian people who supported all of her activities,” Salazar said. “She really believed that the arts were a bridge for peace and understanding.”
The 2018 Carnaval, which was Damasceno’s last, also marked a first. Tainah Damasceno, her daughter, was crowned the queen of that parade. Since then she has taken over for her mother as artistic director of BrasArte, the nonprofit umbrella that includes the dance school, festivals and stage shows, and all forms of outreach.
Carnaval San Francisco returns after a two-year absence on May 29. Ginga Brasil will be there in costume, 60 or 70 strong, dancing and swaying the samba as if their founder were still there beside them.
“When I think of my mother, I think of the sun. Everyone and everything was drawn to her,” Tainah said. “Her willpower and sincerity pulled people in and generated a community of love that will long outlast her short stay here on Earth.”
In addition to her husband and daughter, both of Oakland, survivors include sisters Lourdes Damasceno and Rita Damasceno, also of Oakland, Antonia Damasceno of Rivarolo, Italy, and Neuza Damasceno of Salvador, Brazil; and a brother, Magno Damasceno, also of Salvador.
Tax deductible donations in her honor may be made to BrasArte, 1901 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley, CA 94702.