Dance and somatic education in primary school: a study on discipline with teachers in southern Brazil

ABSTRACT

– The following paper seeks to show how Somatic Education is a usual practice in the classes researched and, at the same time, how it places the body in places of dispute at schools. Notions present in the classes studied such as, for example, the relationship between surveillance and silence and between the latter and listening are thus analysed, among others. This text derives from a study with dance teachers developed in southern Brazil. It describes the research methodological design with ethnographic inspiration, focusing on the work of one teacher in particular. From these elements and from Michel Foucault’s philosophy, the article discusses the role of dance in school, especially regarding the tension between the disciplinary culture of Primary Schools and somatic education of listening bodies. Finally, it shows how the conduct of the teacher engenders an artistic conduct, that is a conduct that models school technologies and creation itself. In this way, we present the idea an ethics-oriented morality, opposed to disciplined bodies, over the code at schools.

KEYWORDS:

• Dance
• school
• somatic education
• primary education
• dance education

Disclosure statement

We declare that there is no conflict of interest with CNPq regarding this publication.

Notes

1. In 1998, the Brazilian National Curricular Parameters are created, indicating dance, the visual arts, theatre and music as the languages of the mandatory Arts subject. However, only in 2016 Law 13,278/16 was published, establishing this mandatory character. The previous law determined as mandatory the teaching of arts in a more comprehensive sense.

2. The mapping of the research subjects identified twenty-two teachers who majored in Dance working in state schools of Rio Grande do Sul (state in southern Brazil), in the Arts subject. This means less than 1% of schools in the state.

3. Foucault presents the school as a disciplinary institution built for the production of disciplined subjects. The author describes the operations of disciplinary technology: hierarchical observation, normalising judgment, and the examination. Foucault shows that in disciplinary technology the code is constituted by the norm, it is a code of normalisation. (Foucault 2003). The author explains the procedure of disciplinary normalisation: ‘there is a originally prescriptive character of the norm and the determination and the identification of the normal and the abnormal becomes possible in relation to this posited norm.’ (Foucault 2009, 57). The school educates disciplined subjects, controlling their mobility to follow the norm. Then, when dance proposes disassociating from the norm, tension arises.

4. The school, a disciplinary apparatus addressed in Discipline and Punish (Foucault 2004), is, among other things, a viewing machine (Larrosa 2002, 61). It is one of the devices for ‘making visible’ those captured by it, in the case of schools: making children visible, to ‘assign effectiveness’ to the teaching process.

5. Julio Aquino (2011) problematises studies which consider students’ silence and immobility as a criterion to measure ‘degree of discipline’ for a ‘good education’.

6. The head-tail relationship is the connection between the first vertebra of the spine and the coccyx, one of the Bony Connections that, associated with the Flows of Movement and with Core Muscle Support, ‘form the basis for the implementation of the Bartenieff Fundamentals’ (Fernandes 2002, 51).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by CNPq under Grant 307386/2019-8;Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico [307386/2019-8];

Notes on contributors

Maria Fonseca Falkembach

Maria Fonseca Falkembach is a lecturer in the Undergraduate Course of Dance Education at Universidade Federal de Pelotas, Brazil. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Performing Arts from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (2001), a Master’s Degree in Theatre from Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina (2005) and a Doctorate Degree in Education from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (2017). She has published articles and a book about dance education. Her research interests include dance education, body and movement studies, body dramaturgy, performance studies, dance-theatre. She has artistic production as a dancer, actress, and choreographer.

Gilberto Icle

Gilberto Icle (BA in Performing Arts, MA in Education, and PhD in Education from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) has been an associate professor at the Department of Curriculum and Teaching and permanent professor of the Graduate Program in Education at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul since 2006. He did a Postdoctoral internship at Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis (2010-2011) and a Postdoctoral internship at Université la Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III (2017-2018). He is a collaborating professor at the Graduate Program in Performing Arts at Universidade de Brasília. He is editor-in-chief of Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Presença (www.seer.ufrgs.br/presenca). He has experience in the field of Arts (Theatre and Dance), with emphasis on Theatre Pedagogy and Performance Pedagogy, working mainly with the following themes: theatre, education, work of the actor, theatrical pedagogy, speech, performance, and ethnoscenology. He has published articles and books on theatre, and has education and artistic production as an actor and theatre director. He has a Productivity Scholarship level 1-D from the National Council of Scientific Research. He is a member of The International Federation for Theatre Research.