Improvisar-se dançando: atencionando o mover, o compor e o conhecer, conjuntamente

Abstract

This doctoral thesis-score aims to investigate the role of attentional processes in improvisational dance practices, as well as to articulate a discussion on the learning process of the improvisingbody. It is also part of the objective of this study to investigate the central role that cognition, attention and sensorimotor-affective skills play in making bodies available and organizing themselves for the experience of Improvised Dance Composition. Improvised Dance Composition is understood here as a modality within the field of contemporary dances, which has been expanding considerably in the last three decades and which deserves a more in-depth look at its learning processes. Improvisation is understood as the practice of focusing attention on specific movements and environment and activating the acquired sensorimotor-affective skills to produce meaning about oneself, in the world, through shared composition and the creation of attentional ecosystems. Using cartography (Deleuze; Guattari, 1995; Rolnik, 2011, Passos, Kastrup, Escóssia, 2009) as a research methodology, this research-score articulates the clues found to present a reflection on how some understandings present in its theoretical foundation and in the artistic experience of improvising bodies can contribute to the elaboration of methodological principles that can contribute to practices of making the body available for the doing of improvisation. As well as identifying the methodological contributions arising from the mapped theoretical-practical intersections to present them as possibilities of pedagogical and creative tools that can support the process of training the improviser in dance. Having as theoretical support for our reflections the enactive approach to embodied cognition (Varela, Thompson & Rosch, 1991; Gallagher, 2017; Hutto & Myin, 2013); attention studies (Citton, 2017; Kastrup, 1999, 2004; Vasconcelos, 2009; Sade & Kastrup, 2011; Romero, 2018; Wu, 2014; Ganeri, 2017; Waltz, 2017); first-person methodologies by (Depraz, Varela and Vermersch, 2003. To address the artistic and pedagogical processes that have improvisational practices as a focus, the research uses (Buckwalter, 2010); Midgelow, 2019; De Spain, 2014; Mundim, 2017; and Wait, 2023. This research also presents the articulation of knowledge produced in artistic and theoretical practices with the aim of pointing to the importance of knowledge resulting from these practices for academic research in the field of dance. Thus, this research proposes the development of methodological principles for the process of training the improvising artist based on three attentional gestures: attention to the sensory-motor-affective aspects of the body; attention to the relationship of the body with the environment and attention to the act of composing.