ARTISTIC PROFILES IN DANCE: THE CASES OF LAC AND LES POUPÉES

Abstract

This study aims to describe the features present in artistic profiles in dance which we recognize for their stability and persistence. It takes as his first investiture the cases of Lac (Sandro Borelli) and Les Poupées (Marta Soares). With the Big Five model - the five great personality factors - it is possible to cut out groups of gestures and movements, non-verbal behavior, those that persist as action and reaction, how receptive and reactive they are to the action itself, the insistent ones to the naked eye. We make use of observation and, consequently, interpretation based on recording on DVDs in a forward and rewind system - forward and backward - and freeze, the freezing of the images of video recordings. Profiles in art are usually studied according to the degree of approximation and distance from a certain factor of the artist’s personality and not as an independent motive in the artistic product.

Keywords:
Big Five model; Artistic profile; Movement; Scenic dance.

Resumo

Este estudo tem por objeto a descrição de traços presentes em perfis artísticos em dança que reconhecemos por sua estabilidade e persistência. Toma como primeira investidura os casos de Lac (Sandro Borelli) e Les Poupées (Marta Soares). Com o modelo do Big Five - os cinco grandes fatores da personalidade - é possível o recorte de grupos de gestos e movimentos, comportamento não verbal, os que persistem como ação e reação, os quais são receptivos e reativos à própria ação, os insistentes a olho nu. Fazemos uso da observação e, consequentemente, interpretação a partir de gravação em DVDs em sistema de forward and rewind - avançar e retroceder - e freeze, o congelar das imagens de gravações em vídeo. Os perfis em arte são habitualmente estudados em acordo com o grau de aproximação e afastamento de um determinado fator da personalidade do artista e não como motivo independente no produto artístico.

Palavras-chave:
Modelo do Big Five; Perfil artístico; Movimento; Dança cênica.

Resumen

Este estudio tiene como objetivo describir las características que configuran los perfiles artísticos en danza con los que reconocemos su estabilidad y persistencia a lo largo de la producción escénica de un determinado artista. Toma a Lac (Sandro Borelli) y Les Poupées (Marta Soares) como su primera investidura. Con el modelo Big Five, los cinco factores principales de la personalidad, es posible cortar grupos de gestos y movimientos, aquellos que persisten como acción y reacción, qué tan receptivos y reactivos a la acción misma, lo insistente a simple vista. Los perfiles de arte se estudian de acuerdo con el grado de aproximación y distancia de un determinado factor en la personalidad del artista. No parece haber ningún interés en entender el producto artístico como algo para ganar un perfil como un motivo independiente de la personalidad del artista.

Palabras clave
Modelo de los cinco grandes; Perfil artístico; Movimiento; Danza escénica.

1 INTRODUCTION

How do the personality factors arranged by the Big Five personality model allow us to locate the traits of an artistic profile in dance? How do certain choices produce certain signatures in the field of Brazilian dance production? The correlations between personality characteristics/traits with traits present in artistic production are not widely accepted among authors, given the difficulties arising from their complexity and the resistance to accept the notion of an artistic signature independent of the psychological profile of the person who developed them.

Studies focused on performers are situated in the domain of psychology and are directed at drawing out the types of people who are dancers and their implications for the occupational domain of their roles (BAKKER, 1991; FINK; WOSCHNJAK, 2011). However, such studies accumulate data and correlations that lead one to ask whether certain personality attributes of an artist are precursors to the career product of performers in the performing and stage arts or do they lie in differentiated zones of variables that preclude direct associations.

However, one must accept that, in place of a style, a profile operates; the profile of a possible artistic personality or the characteristics materialized in the set of their artistic production for the scene. And that such traits from the domain of the artistic may be embedded with traits from the personality of the artist, as they operate in the design when they provide a signature. It is possible to observe individual differences operating in the whole of a given domain, so probably the variation is effective when the non-conflicting combinatorics of the factors of the Big Five dimensions are present.

In many of the approaches in contemporary dance, there may be no visible boundaries between personality profiles and artistic profiles. The scenario is made possible by the development of the concept of free individual creative expression as a priority activity in the construction of dance for the stage. Especially since the 1960s (BANNES, 1987) creators and performers in dance have come to incorporate the understanding that life can approach art or art can approach life, or, still, art and life are realized as the same domain in scenic personas of themselves.

Dance and the new forms of spectacle that are shaped in the 20th century reached an interregnum in the 1960s, with the format of individualized scores, as viable for the artist’s insertion in the world and the more forceful exposure of their personality profile in the product of the scene. In this sense, the “dance step” fades away; gesture and movement can now be this link and, themselves, the possible tools for art and life to be realized in the same domain. What one might suggest as an advance of generality, implies, in fact, the accenting of individual differences and patterns of artistic profiles.

The correlations between the types of traits present in the artistic production in dance with the personality traits outlined in the Big Five - the Five-Factor Model of Personality (MCCRAE; COSTA, 1992, 1987) - are not widely relevant and studied. In this sense, the artistic product of a scenic action seems to be configured in a plane inaccessible to analysis. This understanding hinders advances in the analysis and proposition of new terms for the artistic products of certain artistic approaches.

This study aims to describe the shaping traits of artistic profiles in dance that we recognize for their stability and persistence throughout the scenic production of a particular signature. It takes as its first investment the cases of Lac (1990) and Les Poupées (1997), icons in the Brazilian production of the 1990s at the dawn of a new historical landscape in São Paulo dance, and foundations in the artistic trajectory of Sandro Borelli (KATZ, 2003) and Marta Soares¹ (KATZ, 2000), respectively.

What might be suggested as an advance from generality, in fact, implies the stress on individual differences and patterns of artistic profiles. As of now, one does not want to consider the likely correlates with the artist’s persona.

The task is different: to observe certain artistic products in dance as entities carrying propositional attitudes and to analyze probable correlations between observable traits in these products with the dimensions of the Five-Factor Model of Personality, also coined as the Big Five in the domain of psychology, and its modeling by degrees of emotional reactivity and receptivity.

It is unusual for such an inquiry, in the literature focused on stage products (NETTLE, 2006a; KOGAN, 2002), to point out likely correlates of traits in artistic products with certain factors of the Big Five Model dimensions. The Big Five model (MCCRAE; COSTA JR, 2010, 2004, 1987; MCCRAE; JOHN, 1992; COSTA JR; MCCRAE, 1992) holds that human personality is composed of specific factors. Currently, the five-factor structure of personality comprises Extroversion, Neuroticism, Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness.

Roughly speaking, such factors must contain discernible components as the necessary conditions for the facticity of the interpretation of a given behavior by engendering emotional styles and their facial-body expressions, motivational and bodily attitudes. Thus, we intend to present the probable correlates in Lac and Les Poupées.

We make use of observation and, consequently, interpretation from DVD recordings in a system of forward and rewind and freeze, the freezing of images from video recordings.

The Big Five - the five factors - of personality are presented, the scenes that mark the artistic work are described and analyzed, and the scenario presented is discussed as material for the making of historical-conceptual materiality to advance in the X-ray of a piece of the productive life in dance on the São Paulo scene.

It should be emphasized that this undertaking is exploratory, a first dive into the parameters not commonly argued by analytical studies in dance. As Karl Popper (2010) proposes, regarding critical knowledge, there is a certain temporariness, but it is considered that it keeps the analytic in focus and that it can incite another observation what was considered definitive. “Criticism, of course, consists in seeking contradictions and eliminating them; the demand for their elimination creates a difficulty which constitutes the new problem (P2)” (POPPER, 2010, p. 75).

The new problem is the understanding, under the Big Five perspective, that the artistic products in Lac dance and Les Poupées enact factors glimpsed in neuroticism, in the latter, and in the case of the former the expression of what can be envisioned as the attempt to dissolve this factor. He wants with this theoretical exploration, with this result, a “conscientious and critical examination of a problematic situation and the positions underlying it...” (POPPER, p. 216), equally as a way of resolving it in behaviors of bodies that dance. This is an understanding of looking at fiction as an ingredient that shares factors that guide us in everyday life.

2 THE BIG FIVE MODEL: THE FIVE FACTORS OF PERSONALITY

Currently, personality is the pattern of characteristic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that distinguish one person from another and persist across time and situations (PERVIN; JOHN, 2003; MCCRAE; COSTA, 2010). The pattern involves some change in an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and, in our case, actions in the face of motivations and challenges to their behavioral repertoire (MCCRAE, 1990).

Such characteristics inform the degree of individual stability in the reactivity of mental mechanisms and the way of being of a given individual with consequences for their life outcomes (NETTLE, 2007, 2006a). When confronted with the panoply of events, they manifest themselves in choices, motivations, and especially in the reception and reaction to constraints on beliefs and wants as recurring patterns, as a type of thematic recurrence that is resistant over time and in different situations.

We can understand such characteristics as “behavioral dispositions that persist over time and in different situations” (GAZZANIGA; HEATHERTON, 2005, p. 475). It should be noted that, according to the authors (GAZZANIGA; HEATHERTON, 2005), most people carry the tendency to be in the middle region, and few are in the extremities. However, “strong situations” are not shaped only by situations scored by high extremities, but can be shaped by a series of dazed situations whose score is weak in the individual (NETTLE, 2007, 2006a, 2006b).

The facets make up these traits. Each of them contains the opposition that describes an aspect of the trait. Hence, the continuum between one trait and another: the Big Five model can be previewed from one end to the other; high on extroversion to high on introversion to exemplify (JENSEN, 2016). However, there are predominant traits when viewed in the completeness of the process between the extremes and when one “freezes” on a particular behavior in the dominance of a particular personality.

The “situations” can be observed as inter-individual differences and these differences are synthesized in their amplitude by the five factors (MACDONALD, 1995). Therefore, characteristic is treated as a continuum along which variation can occur.

The American psychologists Robert McCrae and Paul Costa (COSTA; MCCRAE 1992, 1995) began their research by classifying people into five stable personality traits. Ultimately, this research on taxonomy - Big Five - leads to more than mere classification. It becomes a theory, capable of suggesting hypotheses and offering explanations for research findings.

The five-factor model of personality is a widely used and validated model in a variety of studies and observed across cultures in adults and children. It provides robustness to individual differences in the universal adaptations underlying personality, which gives the variation a continuous distribution among them and their facets (MACDONALD, 1995), and, in turn, draws individual variation. In this respect, the system operates between stimulation/reactivity and inhibition of such factors.

Roughly speaking, such factors must contain discernible components (MCCRAE; JOHN, 1992) such as openness to experience - inventive/curious versus consistent/careful -, conscientiousness - efficient/organized versus carefree/careless -, agreeableness/cordiality - friendly/compassionate versus cold/indelicate -, extroversion - outgoing/energetic versus solitary/reserved -, and neuroticism - sensitive/nervous versus secure/confident. Each of the factors, again, as discernible elements of individuality.

The motivational and reactive design is the same among people (NETTLE, 2007, 2006b). The difference lies in the level of closeness and distance of certain factors. Such a difference can be gauged by the extent to which one factor predominates over another, between those that are conferred by negativity or positivity, and how a certain count prevails over a period; perhaps, enough to demarcate the levels attached to a given personality and, in our case, to the artistic profile that is formed in the products we have observed.

Each of the five factors is called a higher-order trait consisting, in turn, of related lower-order traits that come across in various ways: affect gestures, facial expressions, and body postures. Examples can inform how they organize myriad in the body and how they communicate: individuals scoring high in extroversion have extensive smiling and gesticulating (BORKENAU; LIEBLER, 1992) with more nodding and faster overall speed of movement (BORKENAU; LIEBLER, 1992); conversely, people scoring high in neuroticism are associated with touching oneself and between the extremes of body gesturing (CAMPBELL; RUSHTON, 1978).

The authors call attention to how the speed of bodily movement or the fixing or not of the direct gaze affects the way people perceive a person’s personality (CAMPBELL; RUSHTON, 1978; BORKENAU; LIEBLER, 1992), and state how it is possible to interpret limited to the scenic artistic product without correlating it to the behavior of the individual, the creator and designer of the choreographic weaving. There is evidence of stability for the characteristics that make up all five major factors (MCCRAE; COSTA JR, 2010, 2004, 1987; MCCRAE; JOHN, 1992; COSTA JR; MCCRAE, 1992).

Longitudinal studies show the stability of traits affected by all five major factors. In the cases in question - Lac and Les Poupées -, neuroticism gains prominence, which describes the level of emotional instability and the tendency towards negative experiences, such as stress and depression, and correlated with signs of tension, expressing insecurity or sensitivity, hostility, self-pity and guilt (COSTA; MCCRAE, 1980); or the Facets of Neuroticism: (1) anxiety, (2) angry hostility, (3) depression, (4) self-consciousness, (5) impulsiveness, and (6) vulnerability. Therefore, by knowing the facets, it is possible to raise expectations of the correlations between some aspects of non-verbal communication and each of the factors associated with emotional states and moods. The facets expand the notion of passivity and indecision (MCCRAE; COSTA, 1986; 2006).

In the scene, the translation of the Big Five factors into the form of a set of bodily movements and attitudes does not necessarily have a link to the personality of the performer. The lexicography of movement and gesture, the accents and emphases in certain passages, choices and thematic frames can themselves be used as descriptive of the factors of the Big Five dimensions through the observation of gestural behavior, body posture, facial expressions, and shifts in gaze behavior.

The coping mechanisms and emotional reactions to virtual or imagined images and characters seem to be important to the observer because what one observes is observed as an effect of the positivity or negativity of moving or being moved by the scene created there. But personality psychology has many concepts that cannot be directly observed. They are called hypothetical constructs in a class of theoretical description that can be inferred indirectly.

We are interested in persistent central aspects and how this allows us to understand why a gestural group persists in action and reaction, in the way it triggers and reacts to the action itself. The correlations between the types of traits present in artistic production with the personality factors outlined in the Big Five model can help to understand the conformation of certain elements not observed in strictly “technical” analyses because artistic personalities are the products of choices of mental tools and strategies to enable a problem of aesthetic nature to the scene.

It is, however, embedded in the differentiated personality characteristics, the product of the possible combinations of such factors in its roster, in its continuous and approximate orthogonal axes (NETTLE; PENKE, 2010) of positivity and negativity, in how it receives and how it reacts to a given system of goals, goals here of an especially semantic nature.

To reiterate: some of the facets can be seen in an undeniable way, such as anxiety, anger, hostility, impulsiveness - neuroticism -, and in the realm of positive emotions, such as extroversion, the ability to fantasize and propensity to new ideas - openness -, conformity, cordiality, and reflection - conscientiousness. Neuroticism is related to abrupt and accelerated movements, while openness to experience and friendliness are related to smoother movements (LUCK; SAARIKALLIO; THOMPSON; BURGER; TOIVAINEN, 2010).

The components can also frame the types in the modes of predominance of the real types in the artistic constructs, and engender emotional styles and their facial-body expressions, motivational and bodily attitudes of the human being. From this scenario, one can establish rules of correspondence of the uncontrolled observational field - the environment of artistic creations - and the central theory of the Big Five factor model. And the environment is populated by semantically informed groups of movements, not the mere change or alteration in direction and time, in speed and acceleration, but the panoply of them accompanied by strategic pauses and stops which provide direct association between expressiveness - degrees, strong or weak stresses - between what is observed and what is processed as bodily action.

Here are the questions about what expresses a given body and what factors are feasible to infer in a set of movements. There has been considerable discussion about the reliability of the expression of posture and movement in what is observed and what may be relevant, but, again, this study aims to inquire into the formation of critical thinking of dance artifacts produced for the stage.

One observes the quantity and dynamics of a certain choreographic phrasing or set of body parts put together to confer a certain semantics or, in other words, one can infer what vocabulary is there, how it is organized and unfolds into meanings in part and the whole perceptible to the observer.

3 INTERREGNUM

Dance choreographers have long known that body posture can signal a meaning related to a particular factor and its dimensions. For example, ballet dancers urged to use an angular posture to suggest a threatening character and a rounded posture to represent a reactive character (ARONOFF; WOIKE; HYMAN, 1992) reacted to how one projected the set of movements embedded by the characteristics that lead to both receptive and reactive moments.

Early studies by the American psychologist Paul Ekman (1977) suggest that although the face is the most effective channel for expressing specific emotions, what is called the “theater of operations”, body posture provides more general information about gross affect, general information about the degree of arousal or tension. However, this does not allow one to accurately determine the specific bodily state (EKMAN; FRIESEN, 1974a).

Research in the last 20 years has thickened findings of strong correlations between movements and body posture of the quantity or quality of emotion expression and the possibility of inferring the differentiation of its manifestation (WALLBOTT, 1998, MEHRABIAN, 1996a, 1996b). Facial expressions, gestures, and body postures can portray emotions in a non-verbal mode (TAN; NAREYEK, 2009), which makes it possible to make associations with personality factors and have some expectations with these associations (JENSEN, 2016).

The results (WALLBOTT, 1998) indicate that body posture of any type and movement, when it is mobilized in multiple directions and levels, approximates the understanding of what occurs there by the amount/intensity of different emotions through qualitative scaling and allows for the distinction between ambience shaped by active and passive emotions.

Some studies confirm that the “gross effect” can also be derived from the static posture; the apparent inactivity does not mean the absence of the operation of the expression of emotions in shaping the characteristics of the person responsible for the relationships established in a given scenic environment. Some emotions can be accurately decoded from a static posture. The studies by Sanneke Schouwstra and Johan Hoogstraten (1995) manage and result in 21 figures with a variation of three head positions and seven spine positions; they report, among other findings, that a straight posture is judged with connection to the positive ambience while the figure with the backward pelvis, shoulder, and forward head - tilted posture - is related to negativity.

Emotions can not only alter the quality of movement - whether they refer to facets of positive traits, such as agreeableness, or negative traits, such as neuroticism - but also the type of movement, such as a fist raised in anger or yawning when very bored (LHOMMET; MARSELLA, 2015).

Controlled studies (AVIEZER; TROPE; TODOROV, 2012) point out how it is possible to observe and discriminate positive or negative situations in bodies, but not in faces. This must be one of the reasons for the illusory effect experienced by viewers when they report affective valence through the inherently ambiguous face.

However, it is worth noting that a given range can encompass several sub-characteristics or facets because they show reliable intercorrelations (COSTA; MCCRAE 1992). Any variation is always best treated as continuously distributed, more so than categorical types. But in any case, they may show temporally stable facets, so-called individual characteristics. Such characteristics are in part magnified given the exploratory nature of creators circumscribed to contemporary dance, and open to the search for the exceptionality of artistic creative potential.

[…] the distinct characteristics of objects and events - sounds, shapes, colors, textures, movements, temporal structure, etc. - become associated, by learning, with positive or negative emotions/feelings attached to the entire object/event (DAMÁSIO, 2018, p. 208).

Dance products are some of these objects; throughout the course of evolution, they have been and are associated with what Damasio coins as “life states” with negative or positive aspects, states that underlie pleasure or pain (DAMASIO, 2018, 2012).

The kinematics at work in the bodies in Lac and Les Poupées offers a path to the observation of which factors prevail in the basic dimensions, and to which emotions and states of mind (DAMÁSIO, 2012) we can associate them. The kinematic analysis allows us to unveil the affiliation of certain groups of positive ambience or negative ambience. As pointed out by authors (GROSS; CRANE; FREDRICKSON, 2010, 2012), the radius of emotional recognition in the positive emotion group decreases and increases in the negative emotion group as expressed by sadness, irritability, nervous tension, melancholy, and shame (PERVIN; JOHN, 2003).

One must consider that “the art of dance arises from a continuous stream involving affect, conceptual thought, physical sensations, psychomotor skills, all of which coordinated in time-space to create connections between individuals and ideas” (WARBURTON, 2016). A type of materiality that involves transitions between movements installed as phrases of bodily actions semantically informed by sections; and the problem of analysis involves situating the transitions that are the strict sense content of the qualities and states of a given scenic production in dance.

Non-verbal behaviors, such as gestures, body posture, facial expressions, and gaze behavior, are attributions that we undertake on a daily basis as needed by sources of information about a particular individual.

Here, we intend to emphasize what shapes artistic profiles through singularities fictionally informed in syntactic and semantic modes in the model of the five great factors and characteristics shaped through the dancing body. In the dance for the stage, they are interrupted and cut, because the dance needs the proper dimension to communicate any factor, even in an environment of deliberate ambiguity.

4 LAC

He manipulates her with the portées and lifts, as in the original pas-de-deux, but only the manipulation. It reacts to the manipulation as readily different from the original. Not only how he reacts to the manipulation, but how they entwine and walk away almost naked, and she with a gag in her mouth; her behavior suggests a perception of the limits of freedom. After all, he is not the prince and she is not the swan. They are beings endowed with wills just like ours.

In the central pas-de-deux of Swan Lake,² he leads her. There are no counterparts. In Lac, there is a clash. It is almost a push-pull duet. A “nervous” exchange in which he seems to scoff at the lifts, the carries as he carries her body from one place to another; she reacts in “nervous” movement.

There seems to be no temporal gap between the images that are drawn throughout the duo. The incidence of Lac, in the version performed by Miriam Druwe and Sandro Borelli, is on temporality; this is the dilemma that conducts an artistic trajectory that begins here with Lac.

In a claustrophobic arena, gesture and movement pave the ritual game of unfinished coitus because it leaves it open in a stressful environment. In it, she initiates an imbalance between permission and non-permission for mating, for the concession of bodily gestures; in these momentums, she seems to have control of the action. However, acts such as pulling, turning impulses, and displacements through lifts/lifts, promoted by him seem to regain control in this stressful environment.

When they start to caress each other, the sign is that they are in love. But the incisive, cutting choreographic phrasing that modulates the image of the body dynamic seems to contradict a continuous imbalance between the pairs and seems to be counterintuitive: the opposition with the consensus suggested in Marius Petipa’s original version about what may be atavistic in the love/passion polarity. In Lac’s version, the gag in the mouth: “the image of pain, of tears” (PAVLOVA, 2008).

On the rise, intimacy seems to grow in the course of the dance along with the abandonment of reactivity to closeness; the increasing tactility of both is the indication of the attempt to dissolve the neuroticism factor with factors that move away from the reactive and tense set of defense and attack characteristics, which take place in the challenging and angry environment.

5 LES POUPÉES

The solo Les Poupées takes as its basis photos of dolls by German surrealist artist Hans Bellmer³ to dwell on the duality of universal oppositions such as inside/outside, man/woman, living/dead, figure/background in the body. A “nervous” solo is also Les Poupées. Spasms pave the “revolt” interrupted by “hiccups”. Bodily hiccups want to propose another understanding of drawing the scene, with drama.

As Helena Katz states (1998):

[…] it explores the interstices. Those intervals produced by what the fragment lacks. With strong images, centered on the female world, Les Poupées draws attention […] of a dense investigator of emotions through movement […]

For this, the march is always unsteady, hesitant, with sharp falls and, especially, as with parts of the body the idea of tearing becomes prominent, whether in the first section whose costume, the long dress made of tulle, suggests a sylphid inside out, or in the second section, whose costume suggests approaching reality in a state of alert; always modulated, the dance with brittle actions and movements, as when on the floor the constant supports with parts of the arm as impellers of the changes in body attitude, of the twists and the walking on the floor with crossed legs, and, consequently, of the formation of the fragment’s image. A constant asymmetry between bodily limbs suggests the clumsy and limping environmental design, a stressful/negative environment.

Perhaps the key image is when the artist projects the upper part onto the stove, a headless body. Earlier, the reference is recurrent: when with the dress she covers her head, and, in an accentuated way, when she covers her top with pants and in her hands, her shoes. The stressful atmosphere culminates with the rapid, incisive gesticulation of the smashing of a cake over the stove. The sonic rhythm lends the speed of the cake’s destruction that may suggest the shattering of an understanding about certain conduct and sociability, here as the signature of Les Poupées (KATZ, 2000). It culminates the ambience modulated between gestures/movement by traces of sadness and hostility, “depressed” and angry.

Between the anger and sadness shaped by slow movement, and even significant pauses such as when the long hair hides the face, and strong harshness, fast gestures and movement - longer and shorter durations - support hypotheses (SAWADA; SUDA; ISHII, 2004) of how dance creators use certain bodily actions in certain parts of the body to inform the state of the scenic moment, and, consequently, shape the ambience of the artistic product for the scene.

6 NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION AND MOVEMENT

The physical reality of Lac and Les poupées connects to the perception of pain and suffocation, of the ambience soaked by the absence of denouement; or better, the denouement of continuity of the confrontation with real, everyday events. Although Lac points out, there at the end, a probable agreement of the couple’s relationship; nevertheless, the impression stuck to the layout is the destiny printed in the original version.

It is necessary to reiterate that the gesture is housed in the body as movement or as some authors want (SKARDA; FREEMAN, 1987) both are the body; they invade verbal communication, but to it refers because humans keep in the pantry of brain organs procedures connected to them. In areas such as those called Broca and Wernicke, specially developed by evolution to communicate with us and the world being with the face, hands and other body parts (LHOMMET; MARSELLA, 2015).

Precisely, here are the questions about what expresses a given body and what emotions are feasible to infer in a set of movements. There has been considerable debate (EKMAN, 1977, 2011; EKMAN; FRIESEN, 1974a, 1974b, 1969) about the reliability of the expression of posture and movement in what is observed and what may be relevant, but, again, the purpose of this study is to launch inquiries into the formation of critical thinking of dance artifacts produced for the stage. One observes the quantity and dynamics of a certain choreographic phrasing or set of body parts put together to confer certain semantics.

There are general visible qualities recognized in movement: apparent they can be discerned by intensity, malleability or rigidity, expansiveness, or retraction, by slowness or rapidity, as the territory of the variables of that which moves. However, in dance these variables gain a concentrated charge of different goals than ordinary everyday movements, such as changing clothes or sitting (SHEETS-JOHNSTONE, 2012). They gain concentrated difference in aspects as to linearity and as to range within the tension and projection promoted in a dance produced for the scene.

As Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (2012) reminds us, the qualitative aspects of movement pervade its tension and projection into the acting area, and as one can also state in the physical/geographical areas of the scene as well as what moves them, to constitute the dynamics of a particular part or scene.

Cary Rick (1991) postulates the movement as equivalent to action when it is perceived and interpreted as an existential event, an event held close to each of us, as opposed to “motor action” per se. But the key to this analysis lies in the protocol that each movement holds meaning, and therefore, he says, the mind can automatically decide that the perceived movements of another person also serve a purpose and considers this purpose in an associative reflex.

The patterns of motor activity found by researchers (NOVEMBRE; ZANON; MORRISON; AMBRON 2019) hold a correlation with the valence of the movement, but also with psychological and physiological processes associated with the posture of the head, chest, and limbs used in a given activity. The observer perceives this activity as semantic information thanks to such patterns linked to the changing nature of objects and emotions linked to movements (SAWADA; SUDA; ISHII, 2004). In this sense, help comes from the vocabulary in dance, whatever it may be.

From the analysis of movement-related factors such as speed, strength, and direction, the kinematics of movement, it is possible to infer that dancers can express certain emotions by making use of traces in certain body actions and body parts and that observers can accurately perceive certain emotions (SAWADA; SUDA; ISHII, 2004).

The findings (CAMURRI; LAGERLOF; VOLPE, 2003) of observers’ inference of bodily movements suggest visualization from nearby segments in the direction of more distant parts; it is the centripetal force, outward; the opposite, it is centrifugal force, toward the body or body parts. The information changes in direction or acceleration relative to the trunk and shoulders (CAMURRI; LAGERLOF; VOLPE, 2003). Although the observer may focus on the chest area, this does not mean that other parts of the body cannot be perceived, especially when it comes to the movement that specializes in dance as kinetic data and emotional data.

Which parts of the body are mobilized? Do those that are mobilized coexist with those that are not mobilized? These are still unanswered questions because scholars of non-verbal communication are still in the realm of the ordinary and the common. One speculates about the mobilized body parts gaining more attention because from them and with them one wants to focus on a certain direction.

Dances, even those that advocate ambiguity and irony as drivers of the creative process, need to adjust the signals of the contents. Experiencing uncertainty is the driving force of dances after the 1960s in the USA and after the 1990s in France. Even so, the precision of the “message” seems to be the trigger, although the observer must organize fragmented information when it appears of different sizes and shapes. Therefore, it will be up to the observer to assemble coherently according to the acquired kinesthetic repertoire; hence, “uncertainty” as the leitmotif of the development of the creation and the scene.

“Uncertainty” here means the expansion of bodily “freedom” in the stage environment for those who do not want to make use of steps, whether from modern dance or classical ballet to contemporary ballet. It concerns a new strategy of conforming the dance scene understood as contemporary dance as an umbrella term for initiatives that consider the inquiries of post-1960 artists, especially when questioning the concept of dance as the place par excellence of mobility.

Contemporary dance does not refer to what is done today, but to previously untried procedures seen on the dance scene such as the use of speech and positioning about the facts of human life. It is an umbrella term, but one should especially list it when looking at interventions in dance after the 1960s. It is an umbrella term that contains the expansion of the concept of “bodily freedom” inflated by the modernists but apparently does not want to differentiate art from life.

7 FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

The cases of Lac (Sandro Borelli) and Les Poupées (Marta Soares) are taken as the first investiture. With the Big Five model - the five great personality factors - it is possible to cut out gesture-movement groups, those that persist as action and reaction, those that are receptive and reactive to the action itself, those that are insistent to the naked eye. A first study with the limits of action to non-experimental observation.

One can speculate on the presence of such dimensions that traverse the history of artistic products in dance for the stage, from here to back. They are patterns that are resistant to the fulminating and corrosive action of events and the environments in which they occur because they are tied to evolutionary circuits, such as the case of emotions and facial recognition, and feelings, embedded and somatized; this case is emblematic, and in the theater in which it is presented, in the body and in the face.

Without understanding the resistance to the existence of patterns, the task becomes impossible to recognize the type and degree of the dimension that is shown and can confer the semantics of what is observed and how much it departs from a certain pattern, from regularity. To dance behaviors embedded in the negativity-soaked environment and to those immersed in positivity-soaked environments.

Therefore, individual differences are considered key to solving problems on the evolutionary scale with a bearing on life history and the distinct types of choices in artistic products in dance: the most important ways in which they are differentiated and are expressed in the proposed dimensions and the combination of the Big Five factors.

To dwell on Formless (1998), O Homem de Jasmim (2000), O Banho e Vestígios (2011) by Marta Soares, and Jardin de L’Énfant (1994), Inside (1996) and Jardim de Tântalo (2001) by Sandro Borelli may surpass the results achieved here; nevertheless, this study seeks to provide alternative reflection to the signaling systems in the mind/body that performs/that dances.

• 1
  Sandro Borelli and Marta Soares are considered outstanding in the dance scene developed in São Paulo not only for their scenic strategies of making fiction verisimilar via bodily action, but also for their initiative and maintenance in conferring the signature of unique trajectories in the new historical framework of the São Paulo dance scene. Lac and Les Poupées inject parameters not yet glimpsed or not yet experienced by the artists of the period. Marta Soares: “...a dense investigator of emoticons” (KATZ, 1998); Sandro Borelli: “Ave Sandro, Habemus um coreógrafo” (KATZ, 1996).
• 2
  Like most of the production created and developed in St. Petersburg by French choreographer Marius Petipa (1818 - 1910) in the second half of the 19th century, with the support of Russian choreographer Lev Ivanov, it becomes a short version with the expensive procedure of reprise of the four acts. The Grand Pas Deux becomes in the 20th century the attraction to check the performers’ dexterity and the passport to what is understood as classical ballet. It is regarded as the most important scene, at the end of the fourth act, not only in the remake of Swan Lake (1895), but also in Corsair, Raymonda, Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and La bayadére. In Lac, Borelli changes the fantasy version of the prince who falls in love with a swan by equating the psychological struggle for conquest and courtship.
• 3
  Hans Bellmer (1902-1975), a German multiple visual artist, had his sculptural and photographic production associated with the surrealist movement that began in France. The series of disturbing, legless, armless, dirty and distorted dolls made him known to the modernist art world. They also appear multi-limbed, headless, but often depicted naked in sexual poses. Marta Soares focuses especially on one of them: La Poupée (A Boneca / The Doll- 1936), a doll with dismembered parts.
• FUNDING
  This work was not supported by any funding agency.
• RESEARCH ETHICS
  The research followed the protocols in force in Resolutions 466/12 and 510/2016 of the Brazil's National Health Council.

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Edited by

EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Alex Branco Fraga *, Elisandro Schultz Wittizorecki *, Mauro Myskiw *, Raquel da Silveira *

* Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, School of Physical Education, Physical Therapy and Dance, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  02 Dec 2022
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  05 Feb 2022
• Accepted
  21 July 2022