Na trilha dos bondes: dança, ética e aprendizagem sensível entre bichas

Abstract

There is no single way to be a queer person on the outskirts of Salvador. However, interest in dance frequently leads working class LGBTQ youths to join together in groups (some of which are labelled “bondes”) focused on dance practices. In the broader context of amateur dance, this study considers LGBTQ+ adolescents and youths who refer to themselves as “flexibles” (“flexíveis”). If flexibility is understandably a necessary quality for a dancer, extreme bodily flexibility becomes, among these youths, a defining characteristic – of oneself and of the other. In the context in which I immersed myself, “flexibilidade” indicates a practice, which ranges from contortionist and acrobatic movements to choreographies, generally to funk. Similar to a sportsperson, perfecting their “flexibility” is a necessity. In seeking to understand what is learnt when we become “flexível”, this thesis focuses on the constitution of “flexível” individuals based on the set of practical techniques and configurations that create and transform bodies, producing sensibilities, and modulating ethical dispositions. I present an ethnography organized along the following lines of analysis: i) the relationships between people and environments; ii) the sensory and metabolic aspects that informs “flexibilidade” and its gymnastic movements; iii) as a type of “making” adjacent to learning – beyond flexible bodies – trainings also define relationships (not merely pedagogical) between people; iv) the networks of friendship and rivalries, alliances and antagonisms that infuse the phenomenon; v) the ethics and moralities developed at the heart of the practice. This set of issues lead us to certain conclusions. In a bodily culture where the movement practice can also be understood as a spatial realization, its learning is characterized at diverse levels as a primarily generative practice: in its association with care and aesthetics, this dynamic produces bodies, people, and lineages and establishes hierarchies. Maybe, however, the most original point presented in the analysis is how this ethnographic material, which ranges from an ethics grounded in embodied virtues to an ethics less concerned with moral codes than it is with material compositions, ends up rehabilitating rivalry. The “flexíveis” experience what would amount to a “becoming-sport of life” as a richly sensorial force, capable of potentializing their action in the world. In this specific regard, if the centrality of the investment in “flexibilidade” in daily life might lead us to imagine a markedly combative world, it also produces forms of resistance, kinetic practices that translate rivalry as a profoundly embodied experience. Under the mantel of a sense of self-superiority, a common gestural dynamic is established in this Afro-diasporic formatiom as an ethical and aesthetic outgrowth of bravery and resistance.