Serpenteando proposições artísticas, educacionais e políticas em danças do ventre: uma abordagem contemporânea

Abstract

This text presents a doctoral thesis in dance conducted at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) between 2021 and 2024 within the Graduate Program in Dance (PPGDança), under the supervision of Professor Márcia Virgínia Mignac da Silva. Doctoral student Camila Silva Saraiva develops her research with the aim of constructing a critical, theoretical, and artistic reflection on belly dances from a contemporary perspective, exploring their educational, artistic, and political practices, while “serpenteando” (snaking) through feminisms, gender studies, sexuality, and intersectionalities. This contributes to the LGBTQIAPN+ resistance movement, calling for (or demanding) diverse existences in dance. The main question of this research is presented: Is it possible to reframe belly dance, diverting from the cisheteronormative, LGBTQIAPN+phobic logic? “Serpentear” (to snake) emerges as an action-verb, an epistemological foundation of the research, a conceptual principle of movement, a survival strategy in dance, and more than that, as an ancestral technology of life. In line with its objective, the research seeks to build connections and dialogues between biology and dance, opening up to various epistemologies and pluriversal knowledge systems. In this regard, we engage with a diverse set of references, some of which include among others: Anzaldúa (1987, 2000); Agamben (2009); Akotirene (2019); Bhabha (2013); Brandão (2014); Butler (1990, 2022); Borges (2017); Delors (1999); Dantas (2016); Freire (1996, 1992); Fatumma (2023); Fortin (2009); Greiner (2005); Haseman (2015); Jablonka et al. (2010); Karayanni (2004); Krenak, (2021, 2022); Lauretis (1997); Lerner (2019); Louro (1997, 2012); Lipovetsky e Serroy (2015); Lugones (2008); Said (2007); Saadawi (2007); Setenta (2008); Mignac e Saraiva (2021); Mignac (2023); Nascimento (2021); Wittig (1977;2022); Oyewùmí (2021); Preciado (2023); Rocha (2016); Xavier (2006). This thesis-creation is methodologically structured as a qualitative and performative research, aimed at exploring, investigating, analyzing, and describing phenomena and topics across the fields of art, dance, education, sociopolitics, biology, philosophy, gender, and sexuality studies, among other intersections. The research method is hybrid, based on artistic, educational, and social research, specifically on implicated action research, critical ethnoresearch, ethnography, addressing biographical and autobiographical narratives through literature review, document and audiovisual material analysis, participant observation, and implementation of educational intervention, using instruments such as questionnaires, interviews, and field journals. The text is structured into eight sections: two introductory sessions and six subsequent chapters. The thesis-creation critically reflects on and discusses artistic, educational, and political propositions in dance, specifically in belly dance, through a contemporary approach that in some ways deviates from the dominant cisheteronormative logic. We build a reflection that engages with different areas of knowledge, bringing together insights from Biology and Dance, with possibilities for epistemic shifts and renunciation of the usual hegemonic projections and understandings about serpents and oriental odalisques. Considering movement as a foundation of cognition and as a political action of the dancing body, we “serpenteamos” (snake) in refusal of the cisheteronormative order. We investigate “serpentine” ways of “experiventrar” (experiencing belly dance), proposing “reinventrar” (reinventing) possibilities of existence, and “cobra_ndo” (demanding) ways of being in dance for LGBTQIAPN+ artists.