O voo mais alto do cisne: corpos afetados pela experiência no ballet clássico

Abstract

The present research aims to analyze the classic ballet culture, identifying colonialist aspects in it, more specifically cisheteronormative, which unfold to the present day and makes this culture to continue, year after year, reproducing structural violence against people who are part of it’s universe. The methodology used is auto-ethnography, according to the perspectives of Sylvie Fortin (2009), and Sandra Meyer (2014), considering that the research is based on the author's personal trajectory, as a classical dancer, in addition to observation of the cultural ballet scene, especially in the state of Pará, and interviews with dancers and former dancers from Pará. In the discussion about coloniality, this work dialogues with the ideas of Anibal Quijano (2005), Luciana Ballestrin (2017) and Geni Nuñez (2019). About the cisheteronormativity, it is supported by transfeminist contributions, especially from theorists Letícia Nascimento (2021) and Ana Paula Hining and Maria Juracy Toneli (2023). To think about the ballet’s disciplinary system, Michael Foucault's (2012) concept of docile bodies is used, as well as the perspectives of Tatiana Mielszarski Santos (2009), Daniela Silva (2017) and Grace Fernandes da Rocha (2017), on ballet’s disciplinary aspects aimed at children and on the idealization of the delicate and obedient image of the classical ballerina. Emerging discussions about pain, sacrifice and physical and psychological shocks inherent to ballet spaces, there is a dialogue with Michelle Gonçalvez, Fabiana Cristina Turelli and Alexandre Fernandez Vaz (2012), Gabrielle Evangelista (2013), Franciely Prado (2019) and Renata Alves Frederico (2019). Complementing the gender discussions, the theoretical contribution will be from Guacira Lopes Louro (2004), Giuliano Andreoli (2010), Berenice Bento (2011), Ileana Wenetz and Christiane Garcia Macedo (2022) and Paul Preciado (2022). A speculative fiction is developed of a reality where the ballet technique was used, but away from its colonialist culture and approaching the current political and social emergencies, in order to reflect on whether this has a chance of being a reality possible, or it would stop being ballet.