It's time to address another major theme related to the Performing Arts and Presence. In this issue we have proposed an immersion in the universe of the Somatic Education. Similarly to the previous ones, this issue resulted from hard work, but, at the same time, rendered great satisfaction due to the reach of the theme, as well as to the uniqueness and richness of the approaches brought by the texts.
Our task was even harder because of the amount of texts that were submitted, which has corroborated even more to confirm the importance of the theme, its potency, and interest within the field of the Performing Arts in Brazil and worldwide. For this reason, it was our choice to produce the whole issue concerning the theme of Somatics theme and, in opposition to what we usually do, we don't present more than three sections dedicated to the cover subject.
Thus, our publication aims to the hard task of disseminating and making available texts involving major and up-to-date debates related to the performing arts, be it under the point of view of the artistic, pedagogical or research practice of the contemporary scene. Such practices were thought about, above all, from an interdisciplinary view with all its unfolding; this is why we wanted, for a long time already, to make the Somatic Education a theme.
To compound this issue, we have gathered works from Brazilian and foreigner authors who have problematized the theme, bringing together different perspectives and approaches. These texts were organized in thematic sections, so that we can situate them in the wide debate made possible by the theme.
This way, we begin with the Somatics Epistemologies section, comprising four texts, being the first one by professor Ciane Fernandes, from the Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil, with the paper entitled When Whole(ness) is more than the Sum of the Parts: Somatics as contemporary epistemological field. In this text, the author discusses some aspects related to the Somatics in the contemporaneity, based on its technical and conceptual bases, clarifying premises and applications, as well as misunderstandings and constraints. She problematizes different aspects from the origin of the field - conceptual, historical, and technical; passing through the common premises and principles developed by diverse somatic techniques; and reaching the institutionalization in professional and/or academic courses, as well as Somatics as a therapeutic, educational, aesthetic, and research autonomous field.
Professors Priscila Rosseto Costa and Márcia Strazzacappa, from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil, bring to us, under the title To whom it may concern: Somatic Education in academic research, a critical analysis of the different fields of knowledge in which scientific productions on Somatic Education have been developed. Based on a wide and well-founded survey, accomplished in different academic data bases - journal articles, under-graduate final papers, theses, and dissertations -, the authors aim at, above all, offering inputs to future works.
From the Università di Bologna, Italy, we have the text Shaping the Living Body: paradigms of soma and authority in Thomas Hanna's writings, by professor Margherita De Giorgi. This paper outlines some aspects of the discourse strategies adopted by Thomas Hanna to legitimate Somatics - as well as his own method - to the eyes of the scientific community. The notion of soma and the representations of its functions will be recognized in the core of this question. In order to emphasize the persistent risk of the scientific rhetoric dogmatism, as well as its influence on the configuration of somatic discourses, the author refers, mainly, to the radical epistemology of Isabelle Ginot and to the critical perspective of Martha Eddy.
The French authors Joanne Clavel, from the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle de Paris, France and Isabelle Ginot, from the Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint Denis, France, outline their debate from the work Por uma Ecologia da Somática? The professors' text refers to the conceptual and theoretical kinship between Somatics and Scientific Ecology from the definition of a scientific notion of Ecology. The authors aim to define three key concepts of Ecology: potential, allowing to describe, in an innovative way, the model of relationship between subject and environment within the scope of Somatics, and the diversity and reciprocity, from which the paper draws an invitation and a program to think about the integration of Somatics to the scientific ecologic paradigm, appealing to the actors of Somatics to transform their practices according to an environmental ethics.
Under the title Somatic Techniques, Methods, and Approaches, the second section of this issue comprises five articles.
Débora Pereira Bolsanello, from the Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada, for example, discusses the pertinence of the Pilates method to the Somatic Education field under the exciting title Is Pilates a Somatic Education Method? The author puts into perspective the impact of marketing - which sells Pilates method as a fitness activity - and the academic research accomplished on the application of the method for the treatment of several dysfunctions, as well as its role in construction of the contemporary dance aesthetics.
Professor Marcilio Souza Vieira, da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, reflects upon somatic approaches under the perspective of interdisciplinarity. With the title Abordagens Somáticas do Corpo na Dança, the author relates the Somatic Education to an interdisciplinary field interested on the body awareness and its movement, as well as proposing a personal discovery of its own movements, its own sensations. Proposing this reflection, the author is starts from a phenomenological approach based on Merleau-Ponty's studies, using the Merleau-Pontyan description as the research technique.
Paloma Bianchi and Sandra Meyer Nunes, from the Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina, Brazil, in their approach, assume that the Somatics Education articulates questions close to the perception studies, both in cognitive sciences and philosophy. From that, they develop the article The Motor Coordination as a Creation Device: a somatic approach in contemporary dance, in which they problematize the possibility of widening of the Somatics field of action to overcome its initial function of health maintenance and improvement of the technical quality to inhabit the field of research and creation in dance. The authors guided themselves by some principles from the motor coordination study by Béziers and Piret to point to possible unfolding in the investigation and creation process in dance via perception.
Professor Odilon José Roble, from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil, has also elected the relationship between the Pilates method and the Somatic Education field. Under the title An Aesthetic Interpretation of the Pilates Method: its principles and convergences with somatic education, the author discusses the principles and convergence between the Pilates method and Somatic Education in an aesthetic-philosophic approach of Joseph Pilates' original writings. To Roble, it is tacit that the method can contribute in an effective way to the performing artist, and he proposes a couple of relations.
Professor Marie Bardet, from Université Paris 8, France, proposes the resumption of certain theoretical and practical aspects of the Feldenkrais method, understanding it as a somatic method intended to displace the perspective of the body work over a body-object for an education centered on attention though the movement. Under the title A Atenção através do Movimento: o método Feldenkrais como disparador de um pensamento sobre a atenção, Bardet accomplishes a philosophical study of such displacement, discussing its conceptual and concrete effects from a triple characterization of this attention (awareness): dynamic, differential, and tendential. Each one of these characteristics was studied from concrete examples from the practice, from quotations of Feldenkrais' texts, and the resumption of a founding reference: the Weber-Fechner law.
In the last section, Somatics, Poetics, and Education, we present the last two texts of this issue. Professor Patrícia de Lima Caetano, from the Universidade Federal do Ceará, Brazil, with her text For the Aesthetics of Sensations: intense body of Bartenieff Fundamentals and Body-Mind Centering, discusses methodological concepts and proposals approaching a theoretical and practical study about the body, understanding it as an expressive matter in constant mutation and process of reinvention. For that, she outlines the approximation of two somatic approaches, the Bartenieff Fundamentals (tm) and the Body-Mind Centering(r) . The aim of the author was to perceive how these two approaches make it possible the construction of an intensive body which engenders an aesthetics of sensations.
Finishing this section, we have an analysis about a precious experience report by professor Heloisa Corrêa Gravina, from the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Brazil, under the title I have a body, I am a body: somatic approaches to movement at an undergraduate dance course. In this article, she parte from her experience with somatic approaches of the movement in the undergraduate Dance Program of the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria to propose a debate on the pedagogical and artistic implications of this choice. She makes her point of view explicit both as a teacher and an artist, as well as her understanding of the use of somatic approaches in dance, inviting us to an incursion in the students' experience.
With this range of possibilities, we aimed to accomplish our goal: to instigate the emergent themes in the Performing Arts research. We wish you all a good reading experience.
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
Apr 2015
