The development of mythological characters in dance through the neutral mask

• Grant number: 13/13195-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: November 01, 2013
• End date: October 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Dance
• Principal Investigator: Daniela Gatti
• Grantee: Nathan Ranhel Carvalho
• Host Institution: Instituto de Artes (IA). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This Project intend to research the development and exploration of the mythological characters Narciso and Icaro in Dance, using the neutral mask as a methodological support to potentiate the body and gesture in dance improvisations and in the study of archetypes. This project will have as its observation focus the researcher's body, which will go through the experience of the neutral mask exploring its potentialities through improvisations in dance, supported in the Four Elements theory (fire, water, air and earth) by Gaston Bachelard, and in the symbology of the mythological characters. Passed this stages, the researcher's body would be submerged in this archetypical imaginary, that potentiated by the neutral mask work, will get poetically closer to the audience through the imagery resonance, instinctive of the human psyche, with the symbolic and mythological aspects present in the character explored by the dancer, turning him a symbolical representation of the character through its movements and gesture.