What’s On: When it Breaks it Burns at the Battersea Arts Centre next month.

A performance based on a protest and school occupation that took place in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2015 will take to the stage at the Battersea Arts Centre next month.

coletivA ocupação is a group of students, artists and performers from different regions of São Paulo who met during the occupations.

In the process, the group says they began to understand how bodies and performance can be used as combat tools.

When It Breaks It Burns is a collective “dance-fight” built on each performer’s recent experiences.

Texts, music, choreography, and photos taken by the high schoolers themselves make up the scene.

Fighting shouts are sung; street actions and movements are evoked in the bodies of all who participate.

The final two performances will take place in Battersea Arts Centre’s Grand Hall, and be accompanied by a mass occupation of the space 100 young activists from across the country.

On February 28 and 29, young people will be collaborating and debating youth, art and activism and occupy the Grand Hall overnight.

Abraão Santos, performer, said: “I’m from the outskirts of São Paulo and here, dreaming is for the few, but coletivA ocupação has changed my life.

“I’m incredibly excited about coming to Battersea Arts Centre because we have so much to say, and so much to learn.

“Each new city is a new chance to build collectives, build solidarity and maybe help people break the mould. Art is the future and we can make the future together.”

Martha Kiss Perrone, director, said: “coletivA ocupação brings together the emergence of bodies and words, we are a multitude, a chorus.

“We are in a crazy and constant struggle to be together, collectively, in party and in battle.

“We are occupying theatres and decolonizing our bodies; creating new languages and poetry in Brazil.

Here, the struggle turns into theatre and the theatre turns into the struggle.”