The third issue of 2015 reaches the readers with good and important news: the Brazilian Journal on Presence Studies was recently accepted in the Scielo system, one of the major bases of academic publications in Latin America. It is quite a unique accomplishment because the acceptance of the journal in this system inscribes it, from now on, in other qualified spaces of circulation and, consequently, debate. It is also an important conquest for the field, as we are the first performing arts journal to be accepted in this base. Thus, besides informing on the attainment - which now sets the Brazilian Journal on Presence Studies in new scopes of dissemination -, we would like to thank to our collaborators, since much of this result results from an equally important work of dialogue and exchanges, carried through along these last four years.
The feature theme of the present issue is Research in Performing Arts. The thematic section comprises five papers coming from different countries and, indeed, counts on a unique and multiple universe of discussion on the act of doing research in performing arts. From more theoretical discussions to those that make use of a more pragmatic approach, we have here gathered productions that not only present the bases of a debate on the investigative act in/of the field, but that aim, as well, to relaunch, in different ways, theoretical-methodological approaches and perspectives. In other words, the papers here gathered serve less as meremanuals and more as an invitation to us to think and, from them, to create.
Thus, the opening paper of the section, is Dynamism and Creativity of an Immaterial Heritage: the Oral Transmission in Bharata-Natyam Dance Theater (Mysore, India), Katia Légeret presents a discussion based on a case study on the Bharata-Nâtyam style of Mysore, India. Based on a detailed and careful description of movements, positions and gestures, the author presents, also, a central element of her analysis: the participatory observation of the researcher-artist to encompass the vitality of a heritage that here depends, in a defining way, of the creativity of each local and individual transmission - and not of the works said to be finished and acknowledged. With this, the author discusses, simultaneously, the heritage of a particular style (in this case, obviously, the one that is the text's theme) and the very complex forms by which certain manifestations deserve to be analyzed.
In The BPI Process and its Epistemological Specificities, Flávio Campos and Graziela Estela Fonseca Rodrigues present essential elements of the Dancer-Researcher-Interpreter (BPI) method. The authors discuss, in a rigorous way, not only the history of a unique methodology of education and scenic creation, but also debate a significant set of matters that, in the same way, are aimed towards the BPI method in Brazil in the last thirty years. Beyond bringing the definitions of the BPI method, its uniqueness, its way of organization, as well as the dimensions that structure it, the article shows its potence when weaving, in a careful way, a significant set of materials, opening diverse possibilities of broadening and unfolding the theme.
In the third text of the section, Theatre History and Performance: the Archive's Unruliness as Method, Isabel Pinto departs from Jacques Derrida's concept of archive, proposing the use of the performance as a research method. This movement of investigation and thought allows to the author another type of interaction with the historical sources (over all, those on which the History of Theater is supported). All the theoretical discussion proposed by Isabel Pinto becomes inseparable from a pragmatic discussion, in this case, of three performances which propel this investigative movement - in the attempt both to propose another experience of the cultural legacy that we assume, as well as, consequently, to problematize the present and the future.
The fourth paper, About Research in the Arts: a lover's discourse, of Victoria Perez Royo, is based on Rolland Barthes's A Lover's Discourse to construct, in a certain way, some ontological bases for the proposal of a new policy of artistic research. Thus, she makes use, in a creative and original way, of the figures of love proposed by Barthes as elements of understanding of the relationships between researcher and object of study. The analogy proposed by the author allows us, thus, to find quality parameters based on a scale of values that are different from those that are so hegemonic in the academy (productivity, competitiveness, innovation) in the present times.
Finally, and concluding the Research in Performing Arts section, we presentInterviewing and Writing: methodologies for words rooted in dancing, from Cássia Navas Alves de Castro. The text's starting point is a long trajectory in research, in which we see articulated examples, descriptions, proposals and discussions on the investigation in dance. For the analysis and discussion of such a long route, the text focuses two central elements of the experience: the one of the interview and the one of the writing. More than that, thinking the methods of asking (inquiring), as well as those of production of writing allows to the author the creation of a unique way of widening of the debate on methodological methods, processes and systems in the contemporary performing arts. It is accomplished by means of the conceptual creation that circulates between the procedures of inquiring oneself - like the stick-questions - and the forms of its writing - like the writing in between, a contribution for the discussion on methodological paths coming from this same field of knowledge.
Besides the feature theme, this issue of the Brazilian Journal on Presence Studies also presents other texts, related to the wider work of dissemination of the discussions of the field and that arrive to us continuously.
Marvin Carlson's paper, entitled Post-dramatic Theatre and Post-dramatic Performance, brings to the reader the concept of post-dramatic theater, as formulated by the German theoretician Hans-Thies Lehmann. For that, the author takes the recent works of several excellent international directors - Ivo van Hove, Punchdrunk, Signa, among others -, assumed as singular examples of post-dramatic performance. For Marvin Carlson, such discussions, in the way they are operated in these works, create, in a radical way, tensions on the traditional concept of mimesis, as well as on the one that establishes the theatrical universe as a fictitious construct separated from the daily life and its circumstances.
Tonic States as the Basis of Bodily States in Dialogue with a Creative Dance Process, by Carolina Dias Laranjeira, searches to discuss the concept of corporal states in dance from artistic-academics investigations with the corporalities and the dances of the popular manifestation of the Cavalo Marinho from Pernambuco state, Brazil. For that, the author develops a true pragmatic work of analysis, in which an immersion that consists, at the same time, in the observation and the learning of the dance, became here basic for the construction of a consistent dialogue with theoretical approaches on gesture and perception. In the text, the concepts of pre-movement and tonic states are shown as quite valuable for the understanding of a creative process based on the relationship between perception, memory, imagination, states and movements.
A New Psychophysical Approach in Contemporary Theater Pedagogy, by Vezio Ruggieri and Lea Walter, aims to introduce how the contributions of thebio existentialist psychophysiological model were developed by Vezio Ruggieri and his coworkers. The text assumes as a central element the discussion on the underlying processes of the actor's game, as the scenic presence, the process of identification with a character and the complex mechanism of the prosody. The way this theoretical context composes, in an inseparable way, the body-mind is here advocated; more than that, it takes these dimensions from a circular relationship, supported by logics that operate with physiological bases from the perception and the imagination, as well as with the basic role that the muscular structure plays in the construction of these phenomena.
Finally, in The Construction of Presence and the Multimidiatic Stage: hegemony of an immanent presence, Juarez Nunes and Stephan Baumgartel discuss the co-presence of artists and spectators in the contemporary scene. On the basis of the discussion of the problem of the expression in Deleuze and Espinosa, as well as in the critique to the production of meaning in Gumbrecht, the authors develop the debate on two modes of presence: emanative presence andimmanent presence. Based on these discussions, it is here intended to think on a multimidiatic device, with the possibilities of intermediality, and its respective effects on the game of immanence and transcendence.
Thus, with this significant set of materials, relative to such unique investigation experiences, and so original in the sense of thinking and debating the very task of constructing research in Performing Arts, we wish to continue the task of keeping the debate in the filed dynamic from the most different proposals. We wish you all a good reading.
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
Dec 2015
