Ano Novo, Dança Nova

One of the grandest human spectacles on earth is Réveillon, the New Years Eve party on Copacabana Beach in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. This past festival clocked in as the 84th largest gathering of human beings in recorded history. Over 2 million people danced upon the sand, wearing white fluttering linens and drinking sticky sweet Caipirinhas. The biggest musicians in Brazil took to the stage and a humbling fireworks show shook the air above us.

I wandered into this mass of debauchery, my wallet stuffed down my pants to avoid pickpockets, on a mission to see dancer, choreographer, teacher, and mentor Sid Yon Sousa de Sa, better known as Olye, perform alongside Gloria Groove, as her backup dancer.

As the founding owner and head teacher of Cream Dance Studio and leader of Ice Crew, Olye finds himself a (maybe the) pioneer of a new reinterpretation of classic hip-hop dance that has swept Brazilian pop culture and music. A dancer for 15 years, he’s toured the world with multiple companies and studied formally in Brazil, Los Angeles, South Korea, and Japan.

My friend and I walked along the beach, passing the samba stage towards the contemporary music stage, where we hoped to find Gloria Groove, a Brazilian pop singer and drag queen whose voice and stage presence have allowed her to fully break into mainstream stardom.

“We are really late,” I worried aloud, as two hangovers and one police checkpoint had set us back over 45 minutes. “I hope we don’t miss the whole show.”

In true Carioca form, the show hadn’t even started yet, and what greeted us instead was a teeming, swarming crowd, in the high hundreds of thousands, chanting, “Gloria! Gloria! Gloria!” Of course, there were those I would expect to see at the performance of drag queen pop singer: drunken older women wearing light-up tiaras, blond lobster-red sunburnt tourists taking selfies, and 200,000 members of Brazilian Gen Z making the cast of Euphoria look frumpy, old fashioned, and modest. But there were also people who surprised me: old conservative-looking men clutching cheap beers, Brazilian soccer dads with their kids on their shoulders, and even a group of nuns on the periphery gearing up to dance.

The music started and the mob erupted into cheers! We fought our way as far up into the crowd as we could, until we met an impenetrable wall of twerking middle schoolers. I peered hard at the stage, finally seeing Olye in the distance, a gyrating and breakdancing grasshopper, taking center stage. The music filled the air, along with the collective voices of the crowd singing along. I stopped struggling to see, and gave into the rhythm.

Not fully satisfied with this view – from a journalistic perspective – I decided to stop by Cream and see Olye dance at a more reasonable distance.

Cream Dance Studio– located in the heart of Botafogo, a young, hip, and relatively affordable neighborhood in Rio’s Zona Sul– is well equipped and professional looking, while at the same time maintaining a community oriented DIY vibe. Upon entering, you are greeted by brightly colored murals you just know somebody’s friend painted, along with blaring Brazilian funk and the sweaty smell of hard work.

Funk– as it relates to everything we are talking about and should not be confused with American funk– is a genre of music generally associated with hip-hop. It is characterized by specific deep beat combinations, independent production, and, of course, a fixation with the all mighty ass. The genre developed out of wild parties hosted in the comunidades (commonly referred to as favelas) of Rio, most notably Rocinha. It’s raucous, raunchy, and arguably the best dance music on earth. A few years ago, a bunch of Zumba class videos, utilizing the music, went viral, as they depicted older white women in the United States enthusiastically exercising to lyrics that would make Lil Kim blush.

I followed this music, which if you can’t tell I really really like, into the main studio room and sat in on a rehearsal. Olye’s dancing is simultaneously both jerky and liquid, perfectly suiting the breaking yet rhythmic beats of the music. Many of the movements clearly come from old school hip-hop and breakdance, yet I was also consistently reminded of Michael Jackson. Like Michael, Olye’s lower body glided and flowed across the floor along with the music’s more melodic vocals and instruments, while his upper body conformed to a more traditional set of urban dance aesthetic forms; jolting and quaking with the music’s lower beats. The effect is visually stunning and athletically magnificent.

The music ended and Olye collapsed next to me on the wooden floor, his stylish, all-black outfit soaked through, panting.

“That was amazing!” I said, once he had caught his breath. “How did you originally get interested in dance?”

“It actually started with the Fresh Prince Of Bel Air episode where they go to Soul Train and the character Carlton Banks imitates Michael Jackson,” he said, laughing. “That made me curious about Michael and so I looked up more about him and ended up finding his performance at the 2005 VMAs [Video Music Awards]. As soon as I saw it, I thought, ‘That’s exactly what I want to do!’”

Olye, despite being insecure about our language barrier, exuded a charming and welcoming energy. The kind of guy who greets you at the door of a party with a beer and introduces you to everyone you pass. He is seemingly drowning in female admirers, but never comes across as egotistical, he appears instead focused and humble.

“I knew I spied some Michael in there!” I said. “This studio and the impact you have started having on the larger culture is so impressive. What do you think was the biggest hurdle you faced in getting to this point?”

“I think that in the beginning we faced a lot of institutional pushback,” he said. “Traditional dance schools and the traditional dance world didn’t get us. Why we were different, why we needed to be different. We often hold events in clubs instead of theaters because we believe that that is where urban dance belongs.”

“Traditional dance schools and the traditional dance world didn’t get us. Why we were different, why we needed to be different.”

The music blasted back on unexpectedly and he jumped up to go and turn it off. On his way to the sound system he instinctively danced the choreography.

“Tell me a bit about Ice Crew, and your role in it,” I said, once he had sat back down.

“I’m the choreographer!” he said. “We participate in many competitions, but I like to say that we don’t have a competitive profile. I value strengthening a visual identity rather than just winning by following a judge’s criteria. The dance environment is very complicated at times and I ended up deciding that the best way to run the group was to fill it with friends. The base of the group are my training students, people who have been with me for over 10 years.” He paused to again catch his breath and took a long swig out of his water bottle. “At the beginning I set a goal for the group’s organization: I wouldn’t call on people who had no connection to me, no matter how good they were. I valued those who were always by my side and wanted to see us grow together. Today the group is very recognized in the scene. Additionally, every member is managing to pursue a full time career in dance.”

“And where did this passion for teaching and mentoring come from?” I asked. “Did you have a strong mentor when you were coming up?”

“I did and I do,” he said. “In the beginning I took a lot of classes and had different teachers, but one person in particular was very responsible for my growth, Bárbara Lima. In my opinion, she was the greatest urban dance artist in Brazil and I was lucky to have her around. Today I have two teachers who help me even though I’m on the other side of the world, Atsushi Suzuki and Mona from Japan.”

“You really are on an upward trajectory,” I said. “Isn’t Réveillon one of the most viewed televised events in the world?! How did you land that gig?”

“I met Glória Groove’s choreographer, Flávia Lima, in 2019,” he explained. “I went to one of her classes in São Paulo and she liked how I danced and asked me to do it alone at the end. After that we created a really cool relationship. That same year there was a Glória show in Rio and she needed a replacement and asked me to fill in. I was crazy nervous! I had to pick up 7 choreographies just hours before the show and having never worked with an artist like that, it was crazy!

“Last year she put on a show called The Town,” he continued. “She wanted more dancers, because the stage was huge. They remembered me, and brought me out to São Paulo. I was there for a month for the show. A week after I got back, Flávia called me saying that Glória had liked me and that she would like me to be one of her permanent dancers. I worked for many years in a dance company that frequented a more indie scene and the feeling of a pop show is completely different. We dance with headphones, and even so, the noise of the crowd singing along is bizarre. I have a lot of fun and I’m still learning more about this world.”

“At this point in your career, in a lot of places, you could enjoy a better paid and more culturally acknowledged life,” I said. “Do you ever think about moving somewhere that can support an artist like you with more security? São Paulo, Berlin, New York?”

“Yea, but, I love Rio very much!” he said, lighting up thinking about his city. “I am a great supporter, despite knowing its problems. I think it’s a city that’s not only beautiful visually but also very strong culturally. Even so, this cultural force is not reflected in dance. I work a lot in São Paulo and I see the huge difference in pay and that makes me very sad, because Rio ends up losing a lot of creative professionals. But we continue to work to change that.”

“You don’t think you’d ever leave?” I asked.

“I think that Rio has my heart in a way that ends up taking away my rational side,” he said, laughing. “I do dream about moving to Japan permanently. I feel a very strong identification with the culture, as well as it’s a place that really values ​​dance artists. But not now, and not São Paulo, even though there are better opportunities there. I remain here because I believe that I can contribute to a turning point.”

“I think that Rio has my heart in a way that ends up taking away my rational side.”

“When you were a kid and you told your parents you wanted to pursue dancing as a career, how did they react?” I asked.

“I think that with any artistic career there is a feeling of fear from the family,” he said. “When we talk about dancing, this fear is multiplied by 10. When I was 17, I’d say, ‘It doesn’t matter, I’m going to live by dancing.’ It made my family panic!” He made a scared face, eyes wide and teeth clenching, then began to laugh.

“Why do you think you’ve been so successful at this?” I asked. “It really seems almost impossible.”

“I’m lucky that I’ve always been very stubborn,” he said. “I’m very stubborn and I’m very dedicated to doing the best of what I set out to do. In my first dance class I was the worst student. But I started arriving four hours before everyone else to train alone. I always strive to be the best I can. Even though my schedule was full of work, I made a point of taking classes every day. I attended almost all of the courses and masterclasses in Brazil.” He took off his black Yankees cap and tousled his still wet hair.

“Sometimes I think about everything I missed out on,” he said. “I think I never went to an event at my school. I missed out on a lot of my adolescence because I was 100% focused. Today I deal with it better, I can have hobbies outside of dancing and sometimes I can turn off dancer mode and still come back and stay motivated. I am very moved by what I have built here. I feel that I must always do the best for my students. Sometimes my students ask me if I get nervous when I go to give workshops at big events and I always answer that I get more nervous teaching them, because with them I have to do my best. They are the ones I owe everything I achieved.”