A chat and a dance with Retinto Fercar – Handred

In the trans Visibility Month, we chatted with Retinto Fercar, our model from the Jangada capsule collection. We learnt more about his intrinsic ancestral knowledge and about his dancing search for a free life guided by music, colors, movement and respect.

“I’m from Rio de Janeiro, my mother is from Minas Gerais and my father is Angolan. My father came to Brazil as a refugee in 1994, working as a tailor. He was a great tailor and made good money here, but in his head, this was a feminine job, so he didn’t like it. He learnt his technique from my grandmother in Angola. He never taught me, but I always observed from afar as he made little stitches by hand. These headdresses I make, I learnt by myself, I never took a course. Once, I dreamt of a piece, I went to the street and bought a bunch of materials. I took a deep breath, thought, thought and managed to make the first one. By the second one, people started making orders.”

“I practice Candomblé and Umbanda. My specialization is in black dances and its branches. I’ve been dancing since 2012. I live in the Maré Complex and, in the midst of resisting drug trafficking, we continue to encourage cultural movements of this kind; and more and more activities are emerging. I’ve taught classes there too. Now I’ve stopped, because I’ve been focusing on making ornaments. So I’m an ornament maker, a dancer, a model and a dance teacher.”

“I’m non-binary. I won’t always be performing femininity or masculinity, I always explain this. I feel like there’s an influence from my orixá, of having the duality in a single being. I guide myself by the way I’m read by people, but with a certain limit. I feel that, in my work as a model, I’m not recommended for both profiles, I’m more recommended for the male profile. The agencies lack this openness in their perspective.”

The Oxumaré Orixá in Candomblé is represented by a rainbow snake, who envelops the Earth with its tail and ensures the integration of the planet and the renovation of the Universe through transformations. Because it is linked to change, this orixá assumes forms of a feminine and masculine nature, but cannot be crystalized in either of them.

In order to dance together, we made a playlist with the rhythm of the sea.