Cripping Culture: Chris Tally Evans recalls jamming in São Paulo, Brazil.

We’ve had a fair number of memories contributed for our Cripping Culture project and we thought to share a few that have come in so far. Hijinx’s Unity Festival has long been an important event on the Disability Arts calendar, taking place in Cardiff every two years since 2008.

Chris Tally Evans shared a story of the development of a show Skin, Muscle & Bone – an international collaboration that took Chris over to São Paulo, Brazil in the run up to the final sharing of the work at the festival in July 2024.

He gives context and flavor to what was clearly a memorable moment, summing up in just over 300 words the joy of creating music for a cross-cultural dance-theatre fusion.

This is exactly the kind of snapshot we are looking to capture for Cripping Culture, in a bid to pull together a range of memories that add weight to the importance and value of disability arts.

Brazil, Batman and Mam by Chris Tally Evans

“It’s nice to see that a Welsh boy never gives up on his Mam,” said my friend Amanda on Facebook. The Mam in question was a giant sign outside the Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) in São Paulo, Brazil.

In sweltering heat I was jamming with local musician Sérgio Żurawski for an open air workshop with inclusive dance company, Dança sem Fronteiras. Sérgio, famous for being Brazilian icon Belchoir’s guitarist, was playing a vintage Fender Stratocaster with an effects pedalboard that enabled him to sound like a one-man orchestra. I was playing a borrowed acoustic guitar through a microphone because airport security had refused to let my gear onto the plane. Still, it was a hugely enjoyable jam session.

We were in São Paulo, that daunting mega city of some 22 million souls, to rehearse and play and develop a sound score for our show, Skin, Muscle & Bone to be premiered at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff the following year (July 2024).

The other Brazilians I got to jam with were semi-feral dogs living in the side alleys off the Beco do Batman in the Vila Madalena neighbourhood of São Paulo. This was a famous outdoor street art gallery known as Batman’s Alley because it’s darker than the Bat Cave at night. In the bright sunlight, however, the giant ever-changing murals on every wall are breathtaking. The dogs were providing uninvited backing vocals to one of my songs which we were performing in the street for a video shoot.

The whole project was funded by an Unlimited British Council international commission and the final show premiered as part of Hijinx’s Unity Festival in the same week that Kier Starmer’s Labour Party won a landslide election victory. Big things were happening in the cities. São Paulo, Cardiff and Gotham may be very different cities but the same Bat Times and Bat Channels will see good triumph in the end.

We want you to share the most significant disability arts projects and events that you’ve been involved in or experienced. We want to know how they contributed to both your life and the Disability Arts movement. These will play an important part in the stories told through the Cripping Culture project, saving our heritage for future generations.

We are grateful to The National Lottery Heritage Fund and National Lottery players for supporting us to undertake this landmark project.