THE CHOREOGRAPHIC PIECE AS A POETIC AND EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH

Abstract:

We present the comprehension of the choreographic piece as a poetic and educational experience, considering the presence of the body as body schema on the production of language, knowledge, and the presence of the education as inter corporeity. It is phenomenological research, based on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, in a dialogue with the history of art and Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne method. The corpus of research analysis was intentionally constituted from pieces of the French choreographer Jérôme Bel, highlighting in this article the piece Gala (2015). Besides the referred piece, we also ponder over the lived experiences with the UFRN Dance Group; with the students of Physical Education degree course/UFRN curricular component Body Awareness; and with the students of Dance degree course/UFRN curricular component Dance Technique and Aesthetics. From the phenomenological reduction process, we realized that the choreographic piece, as a poetic and educational experience, broadens our sensibility, and our capacity to know, interpret, and create sensible and intelligible relationships with the world of culture, art, and education. Furthermore, it educates us in the understanding of language as an unfolding of perceptive life, involving historicity, contingency, sensitivity, and affections. It is also worth mentioning the creation of senses in an intersubjective way as a fundamental element in the education process, and we ponder over education as intercorporeity, since there is in the other what is lacking in that one so that can put into perspective senses that were unthinkable until then.

Keywords:
Choreographic Piece; Dance; Esthesiology; Image; Body Awareness.

RESUMO:

Apresentamos a compreensão da obra coreográfica como experiência poética e educativa, considerando-se a presença do corpo como esquema corporal na produção da linguagem e do conhecimento, e a presença da educação como intercorporeidade. Trata-se de uma pesquisa fenomenológica, com base na filosofia de Merleau-Ponty, em diálogo com a história da arte e o método Mnémosyne de Aby Warburg. O Corpus de análise da pesquisa foi constituído de forma intencional a partir de obras do coreógrafo francês Jérôme Bel, com destaque neste artigo para a obra Gala (2015). Além da referida obra, em nosso estudo também refletimos acerca de perspectivas das experiências vividas com o Grupo de Dança da UFRN; com as alunas e alunos do componente curricular Consciência Corporal, no curso de Educação Física-Licenciatura/ UFRN; e com as alunas e alunos do componente curricular Técnica e Estética da Dança, no curso de Dança-Licenciatura/UFRN. A partir do processo de redução fenomenológica, compreendemos que a obra coreográfica, como experiência poética e educativa, amplia nossa sensibilidade, nossa capacidade de conhecer, interpretar e criar relações sensíveis e inteligíveis com o mundo da cultura, da arte, da educação. Ademais, educa-nos na compreensão da linguagem como desdobramento da vida perceptiva, envolvendo a historicidade, a contingência, o sensível e os afetos. Destacamos ainda a criação de sentidos de forma intersubjetiva como elemento fundamental no processo de educação, e meditamos acerca da educação como intercorporeidade, pois há no outro o que falta naquele para que ele possa perspectivar sentidos impensados até então.

Palavras-chave:
Obra Coreográfica; Dança; Estesiologia; Imagem; Consciência do Corpo

RESUMO:

Presentamos la comprensión de la obra coreográfica como experiencia poética y educativa, consideramos la presencia del cuerpo como esquema corporal en la producción del lenguaje, del conocimiento y de la presencia de la educación como intercorporeidad. Trata de una investigación fenomenológica, con base en la filosofía de Merleau-Ponty, que dialoga con la historia del arte y el método Mnémosyne de Aby Warburg. El Corpus de análisis ha sido constituido de forma intencional a partir de obras del coreógrafo francés Jérôme Bel, con destaque en este artículo para la obra Gala (2015). Además de la referida obra, en nuestro estudio también reflexionamos perspectivas de las experiencias vividas con el Grupo de Danza de la UFRN; con alumnos del componente curricular Consciencia Corporal, del curso de Educación Física/ UFRN; y con alumnos del componente curricular Técnica y Estética de la Danza, del curso de Danza/UFRN. A partir del proceso de reducción, comprendemos que la obra coreográfica amplia nuestra sensibilidad, nuestra capacidad de conocer, interpretar y crear relaciones sensibles e inteligibles con el mundo de la cultura, del arte, de la educación. Además, nos educa en la comprensión del lenguaje como siendo un despliegue de la vida perceptiva, abarcando la historicidad, la contingencia, lo sensible y los afectos. Destacamos la creación de sentidos de forma intersubjetiva como elemento fundamental en el proceso de educación, y meditamos acerca de la educación como intercorporeidad, puesto que hay en el otro lo que hace falta en aquel para que él pueda perspectivar sentidos impensados hasta entonces.

Palabras clave:
Obra Coreográfica; Danza; Estesiología; Imagen; Consciencia del Cuerpo.

INTRODUCTION

In this article, we consider the choreographic work as a poetic and educational experience, education as intercorporeality, the presence of the esthesiological body, perception, and affections in the educational phenomenon, in the production of language, and in the act of knowing through the body and dance. In this sense, both language and knowing have their inaugural act in the perceptive life of the body and movement, in the relationship with the world, and intercorporeality. The research has its theoretical-methodological reference in the phenomenological attitude of Merleau-Ponty, because, having started from our lived experiences, it requested a methodological path that considers the possibility of a reflection born of the experiences with the world, in our case, the world of dance and choreographic work in a poetic and educational perspective¹.

When we think about dance, we understand it as a poetic time that is constructed and updated, in a performative act, by the engendering of its forces (VALÉRY, 2015). In this act, the body in its movement is not content to account for survival, it goes beyond it, in the sense of producing a state of creation, ecstasy, and poetry that involves an original unity of feeling and moving (POUILLAUDE, 2009; NÓBREGA, 2015). In the context of dance, there is the choreographic work, understood here as a letter of the visible (NÓBREGA, 2015) which, in its poetics of movements, sensations, and ecstasies, is written and installed in the corporeities that are involved by it - artists, students, connoisseurs, researchers, and other subjects who experience the senses.

In its expressive operation, the choreographic work allows us to see, and feel the human creative and symbolic capacity to educate us about the sensitivity and the creation of meanings, and, in its appearance, it constitutes two dimensions: one of the orders of the performative and poetic act and another in the order of notations that allow the perpetuation and structuring of memory of choreographic art (POUILLAUDE, 2009). In its poetic and aesthetic nature, the choreographic work materializes its meaning in the lived experience, in which the artist and connoisseur are involved by kinesthetic empathy. Thus, the choreographic work acquires new meanings with each look, and the corporeities involved are updated in their speeches at the same time that this poetic experience transforms the data of culture and history.

To think of education as intercorporeality is to think of it in the reflexivity of the flesh that we are with the flesh of the world, in an openness to other beings, to culture, and the world of a perceptive and affective order. In this understanding, “[...] perception plays a fundamental role in the transformation of the other, therefore, in the transformation of culture, history, affection” (NÓBREGA, 2018a, p.378), insofar as it is in it that language and interpretive knowledge about the world originate; and the body, as an organ for the world, placed at the center of experience and reflexive operations (NÓBREGA, 2018a), is the body as a body schema that comprises, at the same time, motricity and knowledge, and reveals itself as an expressive field, imaginary and symbolic.

In the context of contemporary dance, we intentionally chose the artistic work of Jérôme Bel because it provokes a shift in our thinking about what has already been put in the choreographic art scene, for example in the dilution of boundaries between representation and the real, between movement and word, and, to his poetics, when using the choreographic work to problematize choreographic art. For this article, specifically, the work Gala (2015) in its following scenes: the Michael Jackson scene; the scene Improvisation en silence tous 3 minutes; and two moments from the Compagnie Compagnie scene. We observe that the choice for this work is based on the fact that it reveals the condition that everyone can dance, also in a choreographic act, without necessarily being a professional dancer. Furthermore, in our experience, this work resonates with our participation in Gaya Dança Contemporânea, as dance and physical education teachers, and the studies already carried out on body awareness and education. We emphasize that Jérôme Bel (1964 -) is a French choreographer who has been developing an intense work in the dance environment, in which he seeks to unveil and reflect the discourse that choreographic art produces about human relations (RB JÉRÔME BEL, 2020). As such, he uses the poetics of contemporary dance, in the terms that Louppe (2012) tells us, as well as the choreographic work to problematize choreographic art.

In the process of phenomenological reduction, in which the analyzes were made from the script of appreciation of choreographic works (NÓBREGA, 2013), we intertwine the reference of the thought and method of the German historian Aby Warburg (1866-1929) in his L'Atlas Mnémosyne (WARBURG, 2012), from which we build boards composed of photographs. To this end, we resort to references from L'Atlas Mménosyne, originally published in 1929, by Aby Warburg (2012), and studies by researchers Claude Imbert (2020) and Georges Didi-Huberman, who use the Warburgian method to appreciate works by art. In Warburg's work, memory is the guiding thread, a force manifested in the course of human destiny as a common heritage. His work associates the polarities and survivals of the soul approached in the context of social memory from images intended for survival. Imbert (2020) explains that the presentation of L'Atlas Mnémosyne, in 1929, proved to be different and surprising since it was not cartography aimed at orientation, migration, or physical and geographical mapping, but rather yes, an entire experience, interested in the why and how of images.

In our research, this intertwining took place from our experience as an artist and educators. In choosing the photographs, the pathosformule was mobilized as a fundamental element to understand our passions, memories, and survivals arising from experiences with dance, choreographic work, education, and existence - both from the images of the works choreographic works by Jérôme Bel as well as our images. In the configuration of the boards, a spatial orientation related to the expressive forms present in the photographs was mobilized. Thus, the boards are the exhibition of our evoked memories, of poetics, aesthetics, and techniques of the body, of past, present, and future times that form the common background of the history of choreographic art. We emphasize that, for copyright reasons, the images are not found in the body of this text in their physiognomies and visualities, but are found between the lines from the movement of the gaze that allows us to describe what is most significant to us, in what stands out in our eyes.

GALA: THROUGH OUR LOOK

Gala (2015) is a show born from the workshops given by Jérôme Bel for amateurs, in the Seine-Saint-Dennis region, near Paris, France. Its premiere was in May 2015, in Brussels, Belgium, and, later, presented in several festivals, such as the Autumn Festival in Paris. Regarding the interpreters, there is a recurring change in the sense that this choice can occur due to the availability to experience both participating in the studios and for the scenic presentation. In the constitution of the cast, there is a constant presence of amateurs “in the strong sense of the passionate practice of art”, as the French art critic Florian Gaité says, and of professionals in the art of dance. The duration is approximately 1 hour 30 minutes and the production is by the Jérôme Bel Company (RB JÉRÔME BEL, 2020).

In our work, we use a video that was given to us by the artist's production - via the website -, using the access code that allows the full appreciation of the work. We emphasize that not all shows are available on the internet for the general public. Thus, it is necessary that the researcher, from the approval of his registration, be enabled by the artist's production to receive this code. In the case of this research, one of the researchers has access. In the show, each scene is presented to the public through a kind of catalog, in the format of a table calendar, however, in A3 size, which is placed on the floor, on the left side of the stage. One of the interpreters announces each scene when passing the sheet. The scenes are as follows: Ballet, Valse, Improvisation en silence tous 3 minutes, Michael Jackson, Saluts, Solo and Compagnie Compagnie.

After presenting data that contextualizes the work, we chose some choreographic scenes that we consider relevant for the research. According to the understanding of phenomenology, this process consists of an attitude of describing the world (and not of explaining or analyzing it) and considering the essences intertwined with existence and a return to the things from an intentional look (MERLEAU-PONTY, 1999). At this moment of the research, we bring the movement of our gaze towards the scenes in the form of description, which we understand to constitute physiognomic, sensory, and mnemonic traits evoked by the images and captured by our gaze in the search for evidence, sensations, and horizons of aesthetic meanings, poetic and educational.

In this context, we share with readers a certain physiognomy of the choreographic scene entitled Michael Jackson. In this scene, each performer, a total of nineteen, crosses the stage dancing the moonwalk. Moonwalk is a dance step created by the American musician and dancer Michael Jackson (1958-2009), in which one foot is supported by the metatarsal and toes, as if serving as a base, while the other foot slides along the floor, projecting the entire body onto the direction you want to go, but backward. The scene begins with the lady in bolero (for each performer, we use a designation based on a color or a piece of clothing that caught our attention) who leaves the first aisle, enters the stage, passes the next page of the large catalog, and we see it written, in big letters: MICHAEL JACKSON. We heard, in the audience, some: “Ahhh!”. She positions herself behind the sign and waits for the music to come in. Michael Jackson's song Billie Jean begins to play. Immediately, she lowers her torso, brings her right hand forward, and begins to move backward - forwards. Just like the lady in bolero, in this direction from left to right, about an audience observer, all the other performers will cross the stage dancing the moonwalk. Each one dances their moonwalk, in their way of being-in-the-world, in the following entrance sequence: the lady in bolero, in her dramatic attitude; the girl in black who moves her head from side to side; the lady in black on her prudent and careful moonwalk; the lady in blue shorts who moves backwards with a spring in her hip; the lady in the tutu on her erect torso and small, hopping steps; the lady with the red bow, her gaze always down and her left hand on her head; the shining lady, in her fluid moonwalk, with hands always flexed; the lady in blue, in her changing dynamics; the striped lady, in her moonwalk marked on the hip and the snap of her fingers; the boy in blue, with his fast, fluid moonwalk, left hand on forehead, right hand on his crotch; the lady with the buckle, in her slow movement, with small steps; the asian boy, in his distant gaze and smooth step; the girl in the skirt, sliding her feet across the floor and opening her mouth; the bespectacled lady in her bouncing steps; the lady in pink, with her moonwalk very slippery, fractionating a “wave” through her body; the lady in the chair, in her slight smile; the lady in red, with her left hand on her crotch, the young man in yellow, with his long, rapid strides; and, finally, the lady in the bun who moves as if caressing her body, as she continues on the crossing.

In the same sense, we present the scene Improvisation en silence tous 3 minutes: the lady in the chair enters, passes the catalog sheet, and we see it written: IMPROVISATION EN SILENCE TOUS 3 MINUTES. Afterward, she heads to the other side of the stage, while the other performers enter. Everyone puts themselves on the stage to fill it, and in different ways. About the audience, some performers stand with their backs turned, others face them at the back of the stage, and others in profile at the front or in the center. There is no uniformity in their positions. The light is turned off and then turned on - like a cue - and they begin their improvisation actions. Some performers create space with the movement of their elongated or contorted arms, others with small gestures of hands and fingers. One performer leans over, gets out, and walks around her chair, holding on to it. Another just stops and watches. They writhe, pass one foot over the other, go to the ground, and, in an impulse of the whole body, go up, down, crawl, and drag themselves; they let themselves be taken by the hands. They intertwine in the space of the stage, take it completely, go from one side to the other, and mix in the space so that each one occupies the possible empty spaces. There is no skin-to-skin contact, and the eyes take turns between themselves and the external space, depending on the intention. The audience laughs constantly, fidgets, coughs and rumbles through the entire scene. Again, the light goes out and then back on, like an ending cue. They leave.

Finally, in the moments of the Compagnie Compagnie scene: in the catalog, the word COMPAGNIE COMPAGNIE is written twice, one below the other. In this scene, some of the performers stand in front of the others and propose danced gestures born from their repertoire, so that, each one, in their way of organizing them in their body and the space of the stage, will dance the proposal of what is being forward. Thus, we understand that a chorus dance is established throughout the scene. The performers are on stage and seem to be chatting a little among themselves and looking at each other, in an attitude of consent and waiting. The lady in red heads to the center of the stage and they surround her. She begins her dance in a drawing of comings and goings, from one side of the stage to the other, by crossing one leg with the other, sometimes to the right in front, sometimes to the left. There are also jumps, and a large wheel that moves and changes direction several times, in a game of coming and going, as well as of size and variations: sometimes the performers stop, release their hands and turn around themselves, sometimes they take each other's hands again and head towards the center of the circle. They continue in a continuous flow until the music ends, the wheel stops turning, and comes undone. The audience understands it is over and applauds. In another moment of this scene, towards the end of the show, the lady in bolero proposes her gestures with many movements of arms and legs that suggest expansion, opening, and displacements through space in a continuous flow that, even when there is a stop, suggests a frenzy, a certain vulcanity that sends us to an eruption of ecstasy and joy. Always facing the audience, they run their hands over their bodies, through the backstage clothes, going back and forth from one side of the stage to the other, form a line and dance the Cancan, turn around themselves, and finally, begin to undress by throwing parts of their clothes in the air and spinning around themselves, then rushing towards the ground. The end.

Having finished the description of the scenes, in our process of phenomenological reduction, from which the body consciousness was highlighted as a unit of senses, we move on to our interpretation of this unit of senses, highlighting its relationship with intercorporeity as education.

GALA AND EVERYONE'S WORLD

Gala is the choreographic work as an “everyone's world”². We see everyone's world from these bodies in motion, expressing different life experiences, in their heterogeneities and similarities, in their distinct cultural genesis, in their surnames that attest to the furthest and closest of worlds, and in their most different ways of organizing the movement in their bodies, in the spatiality of the stage and the relationships, they weave among themselves. We also see everyone's world in their skin tones (dark, black, white, Asian) and hair (black, brown, blond, straight, curly, wavy, short, long), as well as in their childhood, old age, adult and adolescent lives and poetic times. Everyone's world is also shown in the most diverse professions and bodily practices of the cast that participates in this choreography, whether amateurs or professionals, with no interest in distinguishing between dance professionals or not.

We consider that Gala (2015), with her images that make up the phenomenological description, allows us to perceive and share the sense that, in everyone's world, perceptual arrangements are of different modulations. Each one perceives and interprets the world in his way, but also in an intersubjective way since we are not isolated consciousnesses. We perceive in the way of the body to organize the understanding of sensations, space, and the relationship with the other. At the same time, we consider that this work allows us to open up to the perception of dance as this ecstasy and celebration of the body in its energetic and synergistic pulsation in opening to the world, in the creation of a space-time that is, firstly, a relationship of being in its expression with the world, for, soon after, through its unfoldings and entanglements, to make visible another level of the perceptive life that we call language. Here, an expressive, poetic, and educational language.

The stage is crossed by the most diverse moonwalks, from the ones that are closest to the way Michael Jackson created and danced it, to those that, in this way, resemble each other by signs expressed as the hand on the head, the look at low, hip thrust forward with a hand on the crotch, a quick look at the audience. Not always realizing the gliding movement and with a certain restraint that strongly characterizes the step, the moonwalk is in each of the performers. But there is no demerit in not realizing that they are very similar, on the contrary, each one in their way is their moonwalk, and they show it to us. Each one is engaged in being it, in expressing it, and making us feel like being there too, so that, in our style and trait, we can be our moonwalk.

In this performance, the performers explore their plasticity and body imagery, their beliefs, tastes, modes of use, and techniques by which their bodies were organized based on their body and cultural practices (MAUSS, 2003). We can see this event in the expressiveness of the Asian boy's low and distant gaze, in the swaying of the lady in stripes, in the erect torso of the lady in a tutu, in the point marked on the forehead of the lady in blue shorts - a symbol of Indian philosophical and religious traditions - and, in the flexed hands of the shining lady. The interpreters put their entire cultural framework and the use of body techniques at the service of engendering their moonwalks. Their bodies are committed to living and expressing this data of the world, assimilated by them in the exercise of this capacity that we have to be, at the same time, seer and visible, touching and touched.

Just as the painter “lends his body, says Valéry” (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2013, p.18), and in this offering of his body to the world the painter transforms the world into painting, the bodies of the performers are operative and current, they reopen the layers of a time, not too distant, that is found in their bodies as a power waiting for a moment to be traced in time, in history and the spatiality of the world. They become works of art reminding us that we are not only a bundle of functions and nervous synapses but also joints that imagine, hands that tell stories, and feet that dance in time, in the construction of affections and knowledge.

His moonwalks fill the space of the stage with subjectivities and differentiations: with each entry of a performer, the stage is redesigned by a different corporal synthesis, a form of perception and organization of itself, in the face of the proposal of the step, the space around it, the task of crossing, the tempo of the music, and the desire to interpret as truthfully as possible. Each one makes this scenic space another, constantly updating its spatial, temporal, and gestural poetics. Everything is the same step, but not the same. Everything was born from the same stuff of flesh, but each body, through its body scheme and perceptive awareness, performs its expression of being a moonwalk in the world.

DANCE AND THE BODY SCHEME

The notion of body schema, in the context of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, is constructed from his studies of Gestalttheorie, neurology, psychology, and psychoanalysis (MERLEAU-PONTY, 1999; 2006). We understand that, in the movement of Merleau-Ponty's thought, from a phenomenology of the body to an ontology of the flesh, the philosopher will deepen the phenomenological and ontological understanding of corporeality from the notion of the body schema as “[...] only perceptive and symbolic time” (NÓBREGA, 2018b, p. 13). The body schema is constituted as a unit, “an existential layer” not referring to the thing in space, but as a system of references that is in constant relationship with an external space that it frequents and with which it unites. As Saint Aubert tells us in the preface to Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression by Merleau-Ponty (2011):

Its unity, which is not that of “an object of knowledge”, “is understood only as the unity of an action in the world, of a praxis”. And Merleau-Ponty concludes: “then the body schema is not perceived [...]. It is rather the explicit perception. It requires [a] redesign of our notion of consciousness.” (SAINT AUBERT, 2011, apud Merleau-Ponty, 2011, p. 29).

As a system of immediate intersensory equivalences and coexistence, the body schema is incorporated into everything with which it is united by its movement and motor project. In its dynamism, it is done in motricity as a pre-objective spatiality that is not perceived, as a background on which all actions of consciousness and designation are visible and become understandable (NÓBREGA, 2018b; SAINT AUBERT, 2011 apud). MERLEAU-PONTY, 2011). In Nóbrega’s (2018b) movement of thought, we find other elements that strengthen our understanding of the body schema in Merleau-Ponty’s ontology and aesthesiology thinking:

In this understanding, the body as a body schema redefines our point of view about the world. It is not a mechanism or a permanent group of kinesthetic sensations, but a center of perspective. In a function such as motricity, broken down into “representation of movement” on the one hand, and into “nervous phenomenon” on the other hand, it will appear as inseparably perceptive and nervous. Every movement of the body is linked to a “motor project”; and this project varies when we move from the movement of awareness to the movement of designation, even if the muscles are the same (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2000). Based on studies in neurology, psychology, biology, psychoanalysis, literature, and aesthetics, Merleau-Ponty redefines the notion of body schema, also understanding it as symbolic. (NÓBREGA, 2018b, p.14).

When appreciating the work of Gala (2015), we make a relationship between dance and body scheme. Thus, when we see the entrance of each body into the space of the stage, each of them is not a meeting of juxtaposed organs, but an undivided possession, a center of perspective that involves the outer space by its movement. In this movement, the objective space gains affections, expressions, and another symbolic load. For example, when the boy in blue enters fluidly and glides through space, with a speed that our gaze captures as if it were constant, at that moment, we have the perception that the stage moves forward and he, even going backward, seems to stay. It is like that feeling we get when we are inside a train and the flow of its movement along the tracks makes us notice the world outside taking off according to its speed. The movement of the boy in blue also makes us realize that the moonwalk itself (the step) has this ambiguity, of going backward, and moving forwards. Another example refers to the Asian boy who, when he enters the stage, makes it a field of search, as he seems to be looking, with his gaze, for something distant, as if he wanted to keep seeing what is going away. Or when the girl in the skirt enters and tells me in the physiognomy of her movement that she is careful and attentive to what she is doing, that she is completely involved in the pleasure of acting. Or when the bespectacled lady, on her move, touches her crotch with her hand, at the same time she lifts her hips forward. Her action happens so quickly that it involves us in a shyness mixed with a desire to see and be seen in that action.

All are moments and passages of this phenomenal body that is the flesh of the world and comprises affective behaviors, reveals affections and sensations, and creates expressive spaces, at the same time that it is expressive space. This phenomenal body makes the stage, which minutes earlier was a curiosity of how we would rediscover the presence of Michael Jackson, in a field of singular concretions. Furthermore, as a system of equivalences, the body understands the world without passing through representations or objectifying concepts, which allows the most diverse motor activities to be immediately transferable to us (MERLEAU-PONTY, 1999). When we say that the performers, in carrying out the proposal of crossing the stage, each one on their moonwalk, cause us the feeling that they bring together all their previous experiences, bodily practices, and imaginative and symbolic contents for the undertaking of performing such a task, we consider that it is in these same experiences that they find the condition of a new motor meaning, not by juxtaposition, but by apprehension, by an understanding made by the body in its motricity. This happens through reflexivity of the senses, this perspective being different from thinking about the acquisition of habits and ways of using the body, in response to the varied requests of the world, through an intellectualist elaboration, examining all its angles mathematically or in a kind of collage or partial identity of movements.

Merleau-Ponty (1999), taking dance as an example, brings us a thought about this system of equivalences, relating it to habit:

For example, acquiring the habit of dancing is not finding the formula of the movement by analysis and recomposing it, guided by this ideal path, with the help of the already acquired movements, those of walking and running. But for the formula of the new dance to integrate certain elements of general motricity into itself, it must first have received, as it were, a motor consecration. It is the body, as has often been said, that 'catch' (kapiert) and 'understands' the movement. The acquisition of habit is indeed the apprehension of meaning, but it is the motor apprehension of a motor meaning (MERLEAU-PONTY, 1999, p. 197-198).

In its openness to the world, the body scheme is the expression of a certain style, of a way of existing in the world in the frequentation of space. It is a bodily knowledge that understands and makes its motor and existential powers generate in the expression and organization of itself at each present moment, in the frequentation of the space that is not “empty”, nor unrelated to them. On stage, in their gestures, the performers know where their members are and locate themselves in a situation in space, even if they have to look back, or turn around completely, like the boy in yellow and the girl in black. This bodily knowledge is also revealed in the relationship with the other, with language, with thought, with culture, and shows us that the experience of the body is the experience of the world and that the moonwalk experience is not just for the performers, but also from any people who have already tried it and who will be able to do so. There is a circularity of knowledge that does not occur only within bodies, but in the reflexivity between bodies, through intercorporeity, and of these corporeities with history, culture, memory, and time.

When the lady in red goes forward and proposes her motor project to the other performers, that project becomes everyone. In this set, the bodies, as a body schema, not only summon new motor meanings for their own lived experiences but, in their expressiveness, they join the lady in red to express the world, the culture and the times lived by her, until then. Since she had acted for the first time in this choreographic work, and all the other presentations made, the world of the lady in red is taken over by others who make other ways of using it, creating new meanings and updating the culture and the work itself. These others can be in the condition of interpreters or connoisseurs, because, like the interpreters, we, connoisseurs, update our body schemes and our bodily expressiveness in sharing affections, desires, and knowledge from the choreographic work.

In the movement of thoughts by Nóbrega and Lima Neto (2018), in conjunction with the thinking of Merleau-Ponty, with cinema, and with the work La danse, by French painter Henri Matisse (1869-1954), we found a significant understanding of the relationship between the body schema and the expressiveness of the body, an understanding that is fundamental for the weaving of our network of meanings:

According to Merleau-Ponty (1996), cinema gives us conduct, behaviors, physiognomies, and dimensions that open up a fertile field of study on the expressiveness of the body. We understand expressiveness, here, from the reflections that the philosopher worked on in the course The sensible world and the world of expression (1953), at the Collège de France. Now, three themes stand out: vision, movement, and body scheme. The body schema relates to the body and its expressiveness in space, being at the same time an internal agency and an existential opening. Since then, there has been a new meaning for the word meaning, which will henceforth abandon the link to the notion of essence. Meaning is, rather, a landscape. This can be seen, for example, in the question about what the circle is for perception and about the very definition of the circle. Merleau-Ponty refers to the circular sense and a certain form of curvature that changes direction at every moment, but always in the same way (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2011). To understand this circularity, let us turn to another example: the image of La Danse, by Matisse [...]. One does not seek the essence of the circle, what it is in idea; its expressiveness is sought, that is, the circularity experienced as a typical modulation. So, expressiveness here is related to the creation of meanings from lived experiences and the world of culture and history in which we are inserted (NÓBREGA; LIMA NETO, 2018, p. 154).

In this sense, we also bring the image of the circle as this way of existing in the world and of frequenting space, in which the body scheme is committed to totality and the expressiveness of the body, based on the perception that the “physiognomy of this curve is recognized by the fact that it changes direction at every moment and that it changes itself” (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2006, p. 250). Thus, the expressiveness of the performers' bodies when dancing in a circle gives us, immediately, the circularity, the idea of an existence that comes and goes, that changes direction, that forms other small circles holding hands or not, and that joins and make a smaller wheel. All these forms are variations of the same physiognomy.

Merleau-Ponty (2006) tells us that it is from this perceptive experience, from this physiognomy that immediately comes to us, that science will release all meanings and intelligible data about what a circle is. Before defining what a circle is, we feel the circle: this wheel that moves from one side to the other, that makes this coming and going in a crisscrossing movement of the performers' legs, and that increases and decreases its size. This movement also immediately reminds us of our ciranda, so popular in the Northeast of Brazil (and, perhaps, also in some other place where the lady in red met her and invested in her to perform her dance, together with her stage partners).

In this way, the choreographic work educates us about the modulations of culture, in the sense of admitting that they are born from the same material - the world of the sensitive - and have as their subjectivities the creation, perpetuation, and reinvention of their objects. Furthermore, when we think about our experience with dance, the work educates us about the power of images to survive oblivion, perpetuating their physiognomies in the most diverse ways. Whether in the ciranda de roda, in the pictorial work, or the choreographic work, the circle, and its aggregating meaning are present and invite us to understand its symbolic and archaic potential for sharing and celebration.

In Gala (2015), the involvement of the objective space by the dancing bodies also takes on the contours of their improvisations. The performers not only open the layers of time and update the history of dance with their moonwalks, but they also reveal to us, through their movements from one side to the other, passing through each other, all at the same time, the body's ability to situate itself in himself, in the spatiality of the stage and the relationship with another body.

On stage, a body penetrates the space that, a few seconds ago, others had passed. They are faces, passages, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, sometimes intermittent, sometimes spasmodic. The performers live the experience of corporeity that dancing in such a way that they do not remember what was done a few seconds ago, given the immersion they experienced. In his improvisations, there is a time that, in articulation with the thought of Valéry (2015), generates its existence from the performers’ internal forces, as if, almost at the end of an instant, the next already feeds on this about to disappear.

In this sense, we will reflect on improvisation on stage as an emblem, presence, and perception of this capacity that the body has, as a body scheme, of feeling itself, of making us know and inhabit the space from its knowledge and without previous organizing models.

DANCE AND IMPROVISATION IN GALA: THE FEELING

In choreographic art, improvisation can be a resource of creation, the fundamental element of the process of creating. It can also take place in the search for the unveiling of gestures inscribed in the viscera, bones, in the deeper layers of the muscles, for the exhaustion of the body in the exercise of emptying itself and finding other folds, and for the consideration of sensation as a primary source for dance that is to be done. An example of this occurs in the experience of butoh dance (PORPINO, 2018a; UNO, 2018), as well as, in a performative act, on stage, as in Gala (2015), in a direct relationship of the body scheme with itself, with the spatiality of the stage and with the other - audience and other performers, in the event of the performing act. To think about this state of improvisation, in an esthesiological understanding, we bring the thought of Nóbrega (2015) about the work of Hélio Oiticica and the artist’s invitation to dive into the body:

The artist proposes a dive into the body to bring out sensations that can become poetic. For him, “this experience in which art ends, the very problem of freedom, of the expansion of the individual's consciousness, of the return to myth, rediscovering rhythm, dance, the body, the senses, what remains, in the end, for us, as a weapon of direct, participatory, participant knowledge (OITICICA apud NÓBREGA, 2015, p. 259).

We consider that the three minutes in which the interpreters improvise without music are, in a similar way, an invitation that Jerôme Bel makes them dive into their bodies, as Hélio Oiticica did for us through his works, and Nóbrega (2015) through his words: an invitation to direct knowledge, which is done in the body and through it, in the expansion of its sensory layers and the expression of dance full of organicity.

When we appreciate the interpreters in their improvisations, we perceive them as a physiognomy that moves in different directions. We look for a hand and, suddenly, it is already in another place, we see a twist, but soon it comes undone. Our gaze does not reach the most diverse paths made in this physiognomy. We do not cover everything. Through our experience with improvisation, we relive, in their gestures, our feelings of freedom and ecstasy, as well as of not knowing what to do. We recognize, in the expressiveness of the bodies on stage, our preferred speeds, the same twists and we find ourselves imagining what is going on with them, if they think and what they think, if they are bored, or if they are completely involved. We see ourselves intertwined in the construction of an expressive field on stage. Even though each one seems to be in their world, without skin-to-skin contact, they look for the space that is empty to fill it. We recognize that improvisation takes us to a place “inside”, it involves us in the task of reaching more and more inside, as if we wanted to touch with our body what is most sensorial inside it. And everything happens there, at that moment when we move in space and expand our consciousness to immediately perceive ourselves among others, in the motricity that updates our body schema at every moment.

Improvisation is a dance in its deviations from previous elaboration and measures external to the body that lives it. In its strongly sensorial nature, it is expressed in the presence of a body that is so present that it becomes absent and in quality of time and penetration of internal and external spaces that makes our gestures inapprehensible. It seeks not to be guided within a normativity of the already codified step, but to reveal what is going on inside, to expose our emotions, sensations, and desires. It is the dance in the performance of the smallest proximity between what we feel and what we do. It is the dance as almost the same, as an attempt at a symptom, if there were such words in our vocabulary.

In this sense, when we think about the presence that is so present that it becomes absent, and the impossibility of experiencing exactly what happens in the feeling, we refer to the lacunar nature of the perceptive consciousness. Given this nature, perceptive consciousness has its dark spots and is anonymous to itself: we do not see our eyes, we do not see our back, and we do not perceive ourselves when we are perceiving. At the same time, it is only the perceptive consciousness “[...] that gives me the notion of 'the proximal', the 'best' observation point of the 'thing itself'” (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2005, p. 46). We also refer to the esthesiological condition of the body (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2006), in its sensitive and libidinal structure, in which not everything we live is under our consciousness, such as drives, desire, impulses, the movement of my viscera, the unconscious, the feeling itself. This very feeling refers to the depths of our being, the place where all the conditions for the creation and renewal of voluntary acts, of culture, of language lie.

When thinking about feeling, in overlapping the studies of aesthesiology with those of emersiology, in the sense of the delay between the primary sensations experienced in the living body and their emergence into the lived body, Andrieu (2018) tells us that the reduction of this delay it is attempted from techniques and bodily practices such as the use of drugs, alcohol, and sex, as these attenuate the state of attention and surveillance. But, according to Porpino (2018b), the aforementioned author also recognizes, in his work Donner le vertige, dance improvisation as an emersive device capable of allowing a deepening of sensations and the unveiling of other meanings. Within this intertwining, we also find the thought of Nóbrega (2015) who perceives improvisation as an opening for new poetics in contemporary dance, due to its deepening towards sensory centers, and that of Porpino (2018b) when he proposes to think about dance as an immersive device that provokes movements hitherto latent and unrecognized in the body.

Thinking about the return to sensory centers, the provocation of movements not yet recognized by the body, and the attenuation of surveillance, aspects proposed by the authors above, we bring the expressiveness of the bodies of the professional dancers present in Gala (2015). In this expressiveness, we recognize the gestures that make them dancers of contemporary or classical dance, or both, and we consider that they are related to experiences with systematic training. Based on what the authors mentioned in the previous paragraph propose to us, we understand that, in the context of this work, improvisation becomes a space where professional dancers find an opening to approach sensoriality, in a dilution of an exacerbated technical use and the favor of a dance that is seen in the search for an élan, of ecstatic enthusiasm, and of the vivacity that children and amateurs, as Florian Gaité says (RB JÉRÔME BEL, 2020), when involved in the performance of their play and passions.

In the continuation of the articulations between the esthesiological body, emersiology, and improvisation, considering the relationship between the living body and the lived body, we refer to the experience lived in one of the seminars at Grupo Estesia, in August 2017, in which improvisation in dance was one of the integral activities. The activity consisted of two moments: the first, of filming the improvisation work and a second of self-confrontation with the images. In self-confrontation, we all got together: the improvisation participants, the filmmakers, and the researchers in front of the work, Prof. Petrucia da Nóbrega and Prof. Bernard Andrieu. Filming was done in the following way: at the same time, by the camcorders (a person with their camera), and by GoPro cameras adjusted to the bodies of the participants of the improvisation. At the moment of self-confrontation, Professor Bernard Andrieu called our attention to small movements that the living body makes during the action, but which we are not aware of. For example, when our feet, in the moment of improvisation, find, in the small, automatic gestures, an unconscious adjustment so that the lived body can continue with its gestures in a state of balance. In the experience of self-confrontation, it was possible to perceive this relationship between actions that are automatic and unconscious to us, but no less expressive. They tell us about our most internal behaviors, from regions that are silent in our lived body, but which cross our living body. They talk to the world about themselves, even without consent.

Returning to Gala (2015), we understand that knowing where I am is to fill an objective space of subjective knowledge. We know as we move and we move for knowing, without subordination of motricity by consciousness or vice versa. There is a passage from Nóbrega (2015) in which the author brings danced theater in a reflection on the work of Pina Bausch, in articulation with the thought of Servos. The author tells us:

This eruption of the moving body is the very object of danced theater. Why does the body get to dance and what animates it? For Servos (2001), the possibilities of danced theater appear there where the domination of man goes beyond the rational and verbal framework, there where the 'exterior' domination accompanies that of the 'inner' nature. The rational consciousness of the world finds here the experience that the body made of it. Understanding finds in the consciousness of the body a suitable partner. (NÓBREGA, 2015, p. 219-220).

It is precisely in this perception of choreography as an experience in which the understanding finds in the body's consciousness a partner that matches that we consider the choreographic work in its poetic and educational perspective, as it reveals to us, in a performative act, this knowledge of the body that is, at the same time, consciousness and motricity, movement of thought and thought of movement, nature, and culture. Florian Gaité (RB JÉRÔME BEL, 2020), in his reflections, tells us that, in Gala (2015), the stage becomes a place for the representation of intuitive knowledge. For this author, the artisanal gestures of the performers illustrate the idea of an “equality of intelligence”, theorized by Jacques Rancière in the work 'The ignorant master', taking place in the field of dance (RB JÉRÔME BEL, 2020). To intuitive knowledge and the equality of intelligence, we summon the body as a body schema, as this knowledge that unites in its heart, at the same time, consciousness and motricity. Saint Aubert, in the preface to the work Le monde sensible et le monde de l'expression of Merleau-Ponty (2011), clarifies that, at the end of his reflections on the intimate and complex relationship between consciousness and motricity, Merleau-Ponty says only being possible to talk about conscience at the heart of the body schema from its motricity.

Thus, when we appreciate Gala (2015) and reflect on improvisation, we consider that improvising enhances this ability to produce language and knowledge from sensation, from feeling itself, without a previous ordering and considering that perceptive life is the act inauguration of knowledge. Furthermore, we understand that this event highlights, at the same time, the intricate and complex relationship between rationality and motricity in the process of knowing its interpretive nature, and consciousness not as solipsistic and intellective, but as physical, corporeal, and intersubjective.

DANCE AND BODY AWARENESS

In this way, we understand that body consciousness is the perception of itself in an intertwining with the other and with the world, in its events and contingencies. His perspective is intersubjective, tied to the lived world, being intentional and unfinished. Through this view, perception has its axis shifted from the perspective of an intellectual and empiricist representation, which conceives the body as an organism made up of distinct parts grouped solely by mechanical and physiological actions devoid of a relationship with the world, to the axis of an experienced body lived in existence, built and builder of cultural meanings and producer of language, which not only decodes stimuli from the environment but interprets them and creates other meanings in a multiplicity of meanings. This experience is permeated by a dynamics of circularity that unites the biological, historical, and sensitive dimensions and, in its interpretive and creative capacity, not only overcomes the dictates of reproductive determinism but also expresses itself as a possibility of reflection on the world.

When we think of the body as the creator of an interpretive knowledge born of its motor experience in the world, and this circularity that unites the sensitive, the biological, and the historical at the same time, the studies of the neurobiologist Humberto Maturana and the biologist Francisco Varela, in the field of Cognitive Sciences, are significant to us. This meaning comes from the understanding of enaction as this condition of learning through interpretation is related to perception. And its concretization takes place in the historical reciprocity relationship existing between the being and the environment.

For the authors:

The interpretive phenomenon is a central key to all natural cognitive phenomena, including social life. Meaning arises from a well-defined identity, and cannot be explained by capturing information from within. (MATURANA; VARELA, 1997, p. 48).

In this process, the being not only receives the disturbances from the environment, in an instructive and unilateral way but also provokes them. In addition, it responds to the provocations received according to the changes they produce in its self-organization. In other words, there is no single answer, as the physiognomy that each self-organization will give to the knowledge produced is related to its own identity and autonomy. In this process, self-organization maintains its integrity and brings with it all the learning resulting from the deformations it has suffered. Since these deformations are experienced in the heart of the nervous system and during the human historical process, we can say that the nervous system is not ahistorical. It is pregnant with our transformations, whether in the subjective or universal dimensions. In this sense, the learning process requires a circularity that comprises reflexivity between the body and the other, nature and history, the observed and observer relationship, and learning germinated in cellular organizations, in their filigrees. This perspective is close to phenomenological reflections on perception, notably those of Merleau-Ponty.

Knowing, then, would not only be absorbing the stimuli originating from the environment but transforming the world. It is an interpretive phenomenon, which is both in the cell and in the cognition processes of greater complexity, insofar as the being needs to put itself as a project in the world, as called to be active and participatory in the construction of its history and the history of the world that is also yours. There is reflexivity in self-organization that is in line with the notion of intercorporeality as the experience of the other. In our text, this notion is understood as education and comes from the articulations of Nóbrega's (2018a) thought with the studies of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology.

From these references and the articulations that we make with them, we consider that, when we “deform” ourselves, from our lived experiences with the other, we apprehend, in our way, their data, their worlds, in an emergency that does not it is, first of all, of an order of reason, but perception. At the same time, we give these world data our subjectivity, with no linearity of responses. There is a variety that is of the order of individual life, which is marked by history, time, and culture in its most diverse physiognomies.

In this “deformation”, we know what was unknown to us, what we lacked. This unknown modifies us precisely because, when coupled with our previous experience, this new data, through its operation of expression, remakes our expressiveness in the world, and our body schema in its filigrees. It does not mate by juxtaposition, but by carnal adherence. When we move, among so many other moving beings, we know what this same movement allows us to know. Therefore, this knowledge is subject to the contingencies of the world, it is not absolute. This condition is already given to us in our corporeal architecture, as we cannot see the whole. To see one perspective, another one becomes anonymous, and when we look at another being, in his movement he no longer allows us to see the whole. Therefore, perception is lacking, and so is knowledge. There are mysteries, enigmas, shadows, and unreflected in it, just as there are visibilities.

In this way, the experience of the body relativizes truths and allows us to experience education as a relearning to see the world. This relearning takes place through motricity and intercorporeality, considering the opening we have to the world and its things. In this opening, in turn, we experience the possibility of updating our discourses without separating ourselves from the things that call our attention, without separating ourselves from the world, as we are already tied to it by birth.

In the choreographic work Gala (2015), we can see this relearning to see the world through the experience of others in the solo scene. In this scene, the lady in bolero proposes to us to undress her clothes with ecstasy to the surface in her gestures, and the lady in the chair, when heading to the floor to carry out her proposal, reinvents the ways of using the stage and the expressiveness of bodies. In the proposal of the lady in bolero, we perceive the joy and pleasure provided by the state of dance. There is a vulcanity and a rapidity in the changes of directions and in the gestures that sometimes confuse the interpreters, and sometimes lead them to jouissance. In the last two, we realize how difficult it can be for other performers, whether professional dancers or not, to propose gestures that are part of very specific technical and existential frameworks. However, whether faced with difficulties or pleasures, bodies, in their body schemes, are open to the interpretation of the world placed there and are encouraged to implement new configurations and rearrangements of their motor, significant, and learning capacities.

In the context of this scene, being ahead is a behavior of proposing, and being a little further behind, is a behavior of accepting. In the same way, being ahead means saying that you know a little more about what is proposed, and being behind, that the proposal is somewhat unknown and you want to know it. For us, appreciating interpreters in their actions is a way of relearning how to see the world. As interpretive beings, we are continually elaborating the data of the world and endowing them with subjective qualities. This interpretation of the world has its genesis in perception and its expressiveness in the body schema. When the interpreters are asked to apprehend the gestures of another interpreter who is in front of them, they all reorganize themselves through a bodily knowledge that responds immediately, without the need to detach thought from action. Action becomes thought and thought becomes action, in the act. For this, there is availability in the corporeities involved: one that wants to propose and another that wants to know. Both are open to each other, they move to apprehend a new, possibility.

Furthermore, the bodies on stage make us open the layers of time to the perception of our show classes, in the UFRN Dance Group, when, before presenting our choreographies, we staged our path taken to get there: the Dance-Education Method Physics (CLARO, 1988). On stage, involved in the choreographic work as a poetic and educational experience: the creator of the work, its performers, and the public. The choreographic act, whether for its creators or the appreciators, involves lives, involves existences transformed by them, involves similar experiences, and is lived by subjectivities in their body syntheses and the fixation of the gaze on the background of temporality.

We emphasize that the Dance-Physical Education Method was created by the dancer and teacher Edson César Ferreira Claro (1949-2013), or Professor Edson, as he used to be called. Edson Claro was a professor at the Department of Arts at UFRN, where he created the extension project Grupo de Dança da UFRN - currently Gaya Dança Contemporânea -, which referred to the method as the formative basis for the artistic-pedagogical work developed in its early years. The Dance-Physical Education Method in its structuring involves a relationship between dance and physical education that takes place as an education proposal, with centrality on the body, which considers theoretical-practical training, in a multidisciplinary approach, and with a focus on reflection on body and professional awareness. Professor Edson stated that physical education and dance can be committed to performance, but there is a need for a previous training base capable of sensitizing and preparing the body for this state of performance committed to more demanding technical levels, such as Olympic and professional dance companies (CLARO, 1988).

In this sense, to affirm the choreographic work as a poetic and educational experience, in addition to the place of appreciator and interpreter, we also speak for our involvement with the choreographic work from the experience as a student and teacher of dance and physical education.

This trajectory begins both with our participation in Gaya Dança Contemporânea, at the time Grupo de Dança da UFRN, and in the Physical Education course at UFRN. Both experiences are at the heart of the relationship that we understand to exist between choreographic work, education, and body awareness, as we perceive, in our first forays as a dancer and teachers, a quest to know ourselves and the world from the body in a state of dance. This was due to the access to the notion of body awareness, both from the experience as a dancer and from the readings of the Dance-Physical Education Method, as well as through the studies of the work Phenomenology of Perception (MERLEAU-PONTY, 1999), in subjects related to the content Dance and Scientific Initiation.

Thus, we return our gaze to the Dance-Physical Education Method (CLARO, 1988), in the sense that, for its creator, its contribution, both to Physical Education and Dance and related areas. It is to think of body awareness as this integration between the orthodox study of anatomy and areas that have their reflections focused on sensory perception and the search for eutony. Among the body awareness techniques present in his work, we highlight eutony, anti-gymnastics, biodance, and creative dance. As fundamental aspects of body awareness, his method emphasizes bipedalism, the foot as a base and connection with the ground and the hand as a means of communication; posture, considering the biomechanical and kinesiological aspects and feelings and attitudes towards the world; muscular armor, in its muscular and psychological tensions, from the studies of Wilhelm Reich; and Eastern techniques and philosophies, such as yin and yang and their relationship to contraction and expansion, Eastern medicine, acupuncture, and Tai chi chuan.

From this perspective, we understand that the method had at its core a relationship with education, insofar as it allowed us to open up to the perception of the body, in a state of dance and choreographic act, to be an expressive and symbolic field. In this same experience, we understand that there was also access to dance and choreographic work as an educational experience, insofar as there was an emphasis on issues of body awareness as a basis for orientation of existence and professional conduct. Paraphrasing the words of Professor Edson, in this awareness of the body there are also the necessary bases to, if desired, reach technical performance and virtuosity, in the case of training dance artists, as well as, in the same way, the bases for to become an admirer of the work of art and a professional, whatever the area of activity, closer to their body, and the possibility of better understanding the other's body. We emphasize that the corporeities were diverse and in large numbers, a fact that provided the experience of dancing and creating, in terms of choreographic art, to people who were not necessarily or would be dance artists. In the context, there were dancers, non-dancers, law students, physical education students, psychology students, university professors, and historians. Professor Edson Claro liked to work with many people.

As in Gala (2015), the Grupo de Dança da UFRN was everyone's world. In this world, there was a strong desire to find the gestures that that body, or another, performed with better ease and organicity, in a search for an approximation between what the choreographer wanted and what the performer's body organized in his way, in his style. We emphasize that, as we perceive similarities, there are differences between the artistic works of each creator and their relationship with the educational phenomenon. A similarity lies precisely in the recognition of this condition that everyone can experience the choreographic work, and be an interpreter of choreographic work. As a difference, we emphasize the fact that, in Edson Claro's work, there is a state of theatrical representation that Jérôme Bel's wants to dilute as much as possible.

As a student and teachers, in an unfolding of our appreciation, we had other perspectives on the works of Jérôme Bel. This time, in the academic context, on the occasion of two experiences lived in the classroom. The first glances were of the students of the curricular component Corporal Consciousness, in the Undergraduate course of Physical Education/UFRN. In this component, we work on body awareness and the culture of movement based on body awareness techniques. One of the contents was contemporary dance, which involved the relationship between dance and body awareness. In class, for guidance, we present an excerpt from one of the choreographic works - Gala (2015), to understand other perspectives and visions coming from the students about the choreographic work and its educational power. What would they have to tell me about that work? What could I observe as educational aspects from your answers? These were some of the questions raised and the answers gave me elements to think about in the construction of this research. One of the aspects they referred to was precisely the work being danced by people who are not dancers and that this was different for them. But that felt good because they might think they might as well be there. Another point was the difficulty in understanding contemporary dance, as the movements are abstract. About this, we talked about contemporary dance to present a poetic proposal that enhances sensoriality, subjectivities, and kinesthetic empathy, questioning the field of the possible and the creation of meanings indefinitely. In this dialogue, we consider that this proposal invites the spectator to complete the work, considering the need for education for its understanding.

The following views were taken by the students of the Dance Technique and Aesthetics curricular component, in the Undergraduate course of Dance/UFRN. In this component, we work on techniques and aesthetics related to classical dance, popular dances, modern dance, and contemporary dance. Our performance in the class took place in the unit that dealt with the relationship between technique and aesthetics in contemporary dance. In the classes, we were able not only to direct the experience but also to present the research in progress, the choreographic work developed by Jerôme Bel, as well as our work with contemporary dance, developed in the city of Natal/RN. The artworks were contextualized as artistic references in contemporary dance. The discussion was significant and relevant, based on questions asked by the students. The questions involved, mainly, aspects related to the creative processes, poetics, and aesthetics that contemporary dance artists have and express in their works, as well as about the subjective character present in contemporary dance works, whose references are found in the relationship that the artist interweaves with the world, culture, history, time, nature and the bodies around him. However, these subjectivities are made in the context of universality and, in this way, the experience of the work of art in dance educates us about the relationships between being and the world and about its own ability to produce language. In this experience, the issue of education of the senses was also highlighted: when appreciating the work of art in dance in continuity, we educate ourselves in our emotions, we learn to perceive what moves us and what bothers us, and we consider our taboos, and our fears.

In understanding the education of the senses, and the contact with their emotions, fears, and taboos, we return our gaze to the contemporary dance workshop we taught in Natal-RN. The exercise of giving this workshop for more than three years and having students who have been there since the beginning makes us think that this relationship of proximity and time, following the engagement of our gaze, gives us the condition of perceiving the transformations that each one pronounces in their style, in their way of being in the world. We believe that, similarly, they perceive our changes as well. These changes take place in attitudes towards life, in professional work, and concerning dance and choreographic art. We perceive them from the small gestural subtleties expressed in conversations, in the intonations of the voice, in the variations of mood, in the organicity most present in dance, in the processes of creation of the shows and shows, and the quality of the teacher.

Regarding dance and choreographic art, we realized that the experience provides them with rearrangements of their body schemes, an unveiling of creativity, and a more accurate speech when referring to the choreographic works appreciated. As a teacher, we educate ourselves to sensitive listening, to the understanding that each present body is a story, a life process that created that way of being in the world. We also educate ourselves to look for the paths that seem most opportune to a possibility of sensitization of bodies, body awareness, and the production of knowledge in dance and choreographic art that promote a meaningful experience for us. More often, as paths, we seek the techniques of body awareness, the experience with contemporary dance and theater, and the readings arising from our experiences already presented in this text. In that sense, we do not always succeed. There are many situations in which a proposal from one of the students reveals a more fruitful path. In that sense, we educate ourselves to the perception that we are all learning from each other.

We emphasize that the experiences lived with the students of the Physical Education, Dance courses, and the permanent contemporary dance workshop also educate us about the need to provide more and more access to the appreciation of choreographic works, both from Brazilian production and from the world. We say this in the sense of strengthening the perspective that the poetics of dance works in favor of considering the participation of empathy in the processes of learning, as well as the knowledge of the body in education, in the most diverse dimensions in which the educational phenomenon can occur: schools, exhibitions, poetry, literature, universities, meeting with friends, experiencing fear and frustration, appreciating flavors, odors, and choreographic works.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

When we appreciate the choreographic work Gala (2015), we reflect on the body, the sensitivity, and the intersubjectivity contained in the phenomenological notion of body scheme as this background of movement that animates the lived experience, the experience of dance. It is not a representation external to movement, since understanding is inherent to the body that moves, as a presence that configures a certain style of being-in-the-world, as a subjective and intersubjective spatiality of inhabiting the space in which we move.

In Gala (2015), when asked to cross the stage performing the moonwalk, each performer, in their way, performs it, finding in their previous motor experiences, and possible systematized body practices, a motor background in which this gestuality is coupled and a new arrangement is installed, not by analysis and juxtaposition, but by kinesthetic empathy, by intertwining, by mixing. Similarly, it happens when asked to dance to the proposal of the other, through this intercorporeal relationship, directly and immediately, they move at the same time as they know and offer us various physiognomies and subjectivities that are differentiations of the same fabric of the world. Body synthesis realizes its capacity for expression. The body, in its expressiveness, is already found in the construction of language and knowledge, since the work of art is not an imitation of an ideal world. It occurs in the space and time of this fleshly thickness of which our body is a part. It produces sensations that fill objective space with sensible knowledge and make us privilege language as a phenomenon born of the flesh of the world and perceptual data.

Thus, unlike an intellectualist view, which separates the sign from the signification, and an empiricist view that interprets the situation from the stimulus-response, the perspective of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology understands that the signification is made by the body in its intentional movement. This perspective encourages and strengthens the understanding of rationality and education that consider the body already included in education and the data of sensation, motricity, and lived experience as fundamental to interpretations about the world, in such a way that they cannot be made without the acquired quality, under penalty of forming another interpretation, derived from another corporeal synthesis.

When we think of the esthesiological body and education as intercoporeity, we reflect on the educational phenomenon in the intertwining with the other and with the world, in the opening that a being has to the other, because there is in the other what is lacking in the one so that he can envision meanings even not given, hitherto unthought of. This opening is of the perceptual order, not a prior thought. It is also to consider the presence of imagination, of the unconscious, and desires, as movement and expression of being in its relations of intelligibility with the world, relations that are not enough in only physiological and intellectual processes, but base their expressions on this germ of being perceptive. In this way, knowing is not based on the logical ordering of sensitive data, on an understanding of absolute truth, but on the possibility of attributing meanings, of feeling the other and with the other.

Thus, when we affirm the choreographic work as a poetic and educational experience, we understand that it educates us to understand that feeling, knowing, interpreting, and making intelligible relationships with the world are experiences of the body that involve motricity, desires, historicity, contingency, the sensible and aesthesiology. In a performative act, it allows us to update our discourses, not in an immutable way, but in the consideration of openness to becoming and the exercise of freedom as a permanent construction, never acquired. Finally, we consider that his experience educates us in the condition of the expressiveness of bodies and kinesthetic empathy, and the understanding of education as intercorporeity, as the experience of the other, as an opening of a being to the other, in the absence of what is in one and that is in the other.

The combination of the phenomenological method with the Mnemosyne method made it possible to create relationships between the history of art, in the case of dance, with our lived experience, expanding our horizons of knowledge. We understand that the phenomenological appreciation of choreographic works contributes to broadening our view of dance in the space of education through nuanced aesthetic and esthesiological elements that configure the body in its sensitivity, as well as contributing to the perception of the body schema in its expressive relationships.

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• 1
  Research funding: Author 1: CAPES scholarship, public notice number 01/2019- PPGED, process number 23001011001P-1; Author 2: CNPq- scholarship PQ 306657/2018-0
• 2
  This expression - “everyone’s world” - is born in the meditations of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and refers to the need for philosophy to dialogue with lived experience, culture, the production of knowledge and art, having the body as a sensitive exemplar and mediator of this dialogue (NÓBREGA, s/d).

• The translation of this article into English was funded by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES-Brasil.
• 13
  Source: http://www.saosebastiao.sp.gov.br/ef/pages/Corpo/Habilidades/leituras/m2.pdf

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  21 Oct 2022
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  22 May 2020
• Accepted
  30 Nov 2021