Embodying freedom. Ciganos dances in Rio de Janeiro as a way out of social invisibility and a bridge to ancestrality

This paper aims to explore Ciganos dances within Afro-Brazilian religious spaces in Rio de Janeiro. Ciganos dances turn out to be a practice and tool for cultural empowerment and identity resemantizations in an interethnic context of colonial origin. Too often the social ecologies constructed by so-called “minority” groups have not been taken into account. This argument applies even more to the political and religious conformations of Ciganos identity, invisibilized by politics of violence. Instead, the investigation and understanding of these forms of inter-ethnic and inter-religious dialogue is considered fundamental in order to enrich the field of political and religious anthropology.