The Espírito Santo Dancers Union (UDES), conceived and created by Yuriê Perazzini, holds significant cultural, social, and artistic significance for the state of Espírito Santo. UDES contributes to the strengthening of popular urban culture, serving as a space for the appreciation of urban and popular dance dancers, such as hip-hop, breaking, passinho, and others. By bringing together dancers and collectives from different regions of Espírito Santo, the initiative helps strengthen local cultural identity.

The UDES's very name, the unity it represents, reflects its pursuit of collaboration and respect among different groups and styles, breaking with destructive competitiveness and fostering a spirit of community. Through battles, meetings, and performances, UDES encourages artistic production, the technical development of dancers, and creativity. It serves as a showcase for talent and a platform for the development of new artistic languages, providing opportunities for young people from peripheral communities to express themselves and develop through dance. In doing so, it promotes social inclusion, self-esteem, and empowerment, removing these young people from vulnerable contexts.

The movement, created by Yuriê Perazzini, has contributed to bringing national visibility to dances, Espírito Santo dancers, and local talent. With well-organized events and active participation on social media, UDES puts Espírito Santo on the map of major street dance expressions in Brazil.

As its founder, Yuriê Perazzini leaves a legacy of cultural activism, dedication to youth, and the strengthening of the arts as an instrument of social transformation. Her vision promotes a dance that goes beyond the stage, reaching into everyday life and cultural rights.

The importance of the Urban Dance Meeting

The Urban Dance Meeting, which took place after the creation of the UDES, transforms the city into a large, open-air stage. The streets, blocks, squares, alleys, stairways, and corners become living settings where different bodies express themselves, resist, and assert themselves. Every movement is
more than aesthetics—it's history, it's a cry, it's memory that vibrates in gestures. Dancing in the city is reclaiming territory, it's transforming space into a place of affection, struggle, and belonging.

When diverse bodies occupy these spaces through dance, they break down invisible walls, challenge norms, and recreate meaning. The concrete floor becomes sacred ground. The hot asphalt welcomes ancestral steps that echo knowledge passed down from generation to generation. There is exchange. There is encounter. There is life pulsating between a turn and a leap.

This dancing occupation is not just an artistic expression—it is also a political gesture. It is a presence that transforms urban space into a symbolic territory, where stories, pains, and joys are shared. Dancing is also resisting erasure, remembering that the body is an archive, a language, a living territory of memories and cultures.

And so, through dancing, bodies connect. They build networks, strengthen identities, and celebrate their existence in and through movement. In dance, the urban space becomes humanized, the city becomes a place of welcome, and bodies become protagonists of a collective narrative that pulses to the rhythm of ancestry and freedom.