The teaching/learningofthe flamenco dance from the psychoanalysis point of view

Author(s)

Cristina Santaella Braga

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Artes
• Defense date: 2010-11-08

Examining board members

Cássia Navas Alves de Castro; Graziela Rodrigues; Leda Tenório da Motta

• Advisor: Cássia Navas Alves de Castro

Abstract

The present thesis is a study of the dancing body from the perspective of psychoanalysis. It has a special focus on psyche of body representation and of psychical transference in the context of teaching and learning flamenco dance. It is claimed that the construal of the corporal image and the changes in the subjective position of the subject are fundamental in dancing. In a first step, the study reveals how the image of the body, as the representation of the psyche, and the concepts of transference and counter-transference may be understood from a strictly psychoanalytic point of view. In a second step, these concepts are made operative in order to give evidence to their relevance in the context of teaching and learning to dance. Since the thesis aims at studying the intersection between psychoanalysis and dancepedagogy as a methodology of a work in progress, the sense of movement in dancing is also investigated. All theoretical considerations are based on concrete observations of the behavior of a class of eight to ten students participating in a dance laboratory; all of them have given their permission to the researcher to publish the data and the results of this study. The dancing classes were offered and attended twice a week during a period of twenty-two weeks, including the final presentations and performances. For the purpose of documentation and psychoanalytic interpretation of the participants' body movements, video cameras were installed in the dance hall. The resulting vídeo documentation made a reliable close analysis of the observed situations of leaning and teaching possible. The foundation of the minute analysis of dance movements is a semiotic study of the nonverbal language of dance, and in particular of flamenco. The categories obtained from this fundamental semiotic study of bodily and facial movements were applied in the course of this study. Parallel with the laboratory analyses, the relevant psychoanalytical key concepts were reconsidered in the course of the study. In all chapters of the study, exemplary live scenes selected from the dance hall data serve to consolidate the analysis, giving support to, and allowing reconsiderations of, the fundamental psychoanalytical premises (AU)