Centro Cultural Cartola: um estudo sobre envelhecimento e migração com alunos de dança de salão

Esta Dissertação organiza-se a partir de dois eixos temáticos: envelhecimento e migração. Foi realizada tendo por base a teoria de cunho social que a fundamenta e a elaboração das entrevistas com alunos da aula de dança de salão do Centro Cultural Cartola, localizado no Complexo da Mangueira, na cidade do Rio de Janeiro. O objetivo primordial é verificar como grupo beneficia-se dos recursos oferecidos pela instituição através das oficinas de dança de salão no processo de construção do envelhecimento. A primeira observação foi constatar que havia, ao lado da motivação do prazer proporcionado pela dança, um estímulo quanto à preservação da saúde. Paralelamente, na hora da elaboração do perfil dos frequentadores, foi observado que expressivo percentual do grupo era de migrantes, fator que veio a integrar os dados. O trabalho divide-se em quatro capítulos. No primeiro, apresentam-se o Centro Cultural Cartola, o contexto em que a pesquisa é realizada, as oficinas e atividades oferecidas, bem como suas principais personagens: Cartola e D. Zica. No segundo, o envelhecimento é abordado a partir da obra da antropóloga Guita Grin Debert, principal referência teórica para discussão dessa temática. Em seguida, o capítulo três discorre sobre a decisão de o indivíduo optar pela migração, sob o ponto de vista daquele que a vivenciou, considerando suas motivações e dificuldades. Para tal, recorreu-se aos textos acadêmicos de Ademir Pacceli Ferreira, entre outros autores. Como metodologia, privilegiou-se a pesquisa participativa de Thiollant, cujo principal recurso foi a pesquisa de campo, com coleta de dados e análise das entrevistas realizadas. No quarto e último capítulo, as entrevistas são apresentadas, destacando-se os principais aspectos relativos aos temas da pesquisa e realizando uma articulação entre eles.

Principles of sensorimotor learning.

The exploits of Martina Navratilova and Roger Federer represent the pinnacle of motor learning. However, when considering the range and complexity of the processes that are involved in motor learning, even the mere mortals among us exhibit abilities that are impressive. We exercise these abilities when taking up new activities - whether it is snowboarding or ballroom dancing - but also engage in substantial motor learning on a daily basis as we adapt to changes in our environment, manipulate new objects and refine existing skills. Here we review recent research in human motor learning with an emphasis on the computational mechanisms that are involved.

Principles of sensorimotor learning

The exploits of Martina Navratilova and Roger Federer represent the pinnacle of motor learning. However, when considering the range and complexity of the processes that are involved in motor learning, even the mere mortals among us exhibit abilities that are impressive. We exercise these abilities when taking up new activities-whether it is snowboarding or ballroom dancing-but also engage in substantial motor learning on a daily basis as we adapt to changes in our environment, manipulate new objects and refine existing skills. Here we review recent research in human motor learning with an emphasis on the computational mechanisms that are involved. © 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.

Contato corporal entre adolescentes através da dança de salão na escola

The objective of this study was to identify the reaction and perception of adolescents in relation to body contact as well as emotional expressions through ballroom dancing. Forty-two adolescents from a public elementary school in the state of São Paulo participated in the study. Data gathering was conducted in groups by filming the ballroom dance class and applying a questionnaire about the experience. The dance experience was observed to provide greater body proximity and demonstration of affection, since part of the participants reported well-being, while others reported being embarrassed by dancing with a partner from the opposite sex. It was concluded that more dance activities related to biopsychosocial development need to be offered at school since ballroom dancing can help in interaction promoting body contact and thus facilitate in the process of interpersonal relations between adolescents.

Dança de salão, funções executivas e memória em idosos institucionalizados

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Identificando tipos de personalidade na dança de salão

Many studies have shown a variety of benefits that the practice of Ballroom Dancing can bring, such as leisure and entertainment, the release of tension from a stressful routine, improving relationships, expanding social contacts. The rationale of this study is by the need to evaluate a different sphere of life of people involving the structure that is the personality. The man is humanized in contact with other men and the culture it is almost impossible to grow it in isolation, that is, are the social relationships that allow men to become human and her personality structure. The relationship brought about by the ballroom dancing can benefit the development of personality or simply put individuals in situations that provide a greater understanding of yourself, as this activity has characteristics that greatly facilitate social contact between people who practice it as the relationship between gentleman and lady for a dance, the contact with people in different classes, social events where it is practiced and even the music that is danced. This work aimed to be able to identify the type or types, the most common personalities exist in one group of participants in a course of Ballroom, based on the technique of Enneagram developed and disseminated by Gurdjieff, whose characteristic is to divide into nine different personality types. Participants were 42 students of the extent to ballroom dancing. We administered a questionnaire to identify the personality of each participant and then there was a second observation time the behavior of six participants in the class for confirmation of your psychological type to issofoi used a checklist developed by the author. Was also investigated whether there are differences of gender and psychological types who seek more such activity. The conclusions are that there are a large number of persons type 9, more than 42% and are predominantly male, since... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)

Differential activation of the lateral premotor cortex during action observation

Background Action observation leads to neural activation of the human premotor cortex. This study examined how the level of motor expertise (expert vs. novice) in ballroom dancing and the visual viewpoint (internal vs. external viewpoint) influence this activation within different parts of this area of the brain. Results Sixteen dance experts and 16 novices observed ballroom dance videos from internal or external viewpoints while lying in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. A conjunction analysis of all observation conditions showed that action observation activated distinct networks of premotor, parietal, and cerebellar structures. Experts revealed increased activation in the ventral premotor cortex compared to novices. An internal viewpoint led to higher activation of the dorsal premotor cortex. Conclusions The present results suggest that the ventral and dorsal premotor cortex adopt differential roles during action observation depending on the level of motor expertise and the viewpoint.

A dança de salão no processo de composição coreográfica em Jomar Mesquita

Esta dissertação apresenta como objetivos conhecer e descrever o processo de composição coreográfica de Jomar Mesquita, onde a transposição da Dança de Salão do seu contexto genuíno e social para o contexto cênico constitui a dimensão estruturante do processo criativo. A obra de Jomar Mesquita pode ser vista principalmente através das apresentações da Mimulus Companhia de Dança (MCD), a qual ele dirige, por isso a pesquisadora foi a Belo Horizonte/Minas Gerais – Brasil, onde a companhia funciona, realizar a pesquisa de campo. Esta pesquisa apresenta-se como um estudo de caso cuja metodologia é de natureza qualitativa. Foram usados como instrumentos desta pesquisa a observação não-participante da rotina diária do estabelecimento onde funcionam a Mimulus Companhia de Dança, a Mimulus Escola de Dança e a Associação Cultural Mimulus; entrevistas semiestruturadas a integrantes da Mimulus Companhia de Dança e dois funcionários da Mimulus Escola de Dança; questionários a alunos da Mimulus Escola de Dança; e fontes documentais acerca da Mimulus Companhia de Dança. Esta pesquisa demonstrou que o processo de composição coreográfica em Jomar Mesquita caracteriza-se principalmente pelas desconstruções dos passos e figuras padronizados da Dança de Salão, assim como das representações e conceitos incutidos nessa dança. Caracteriza-se ainda pela participação dos bailarinos tanto nos processos vivenciados pela MCD, quanto nos processos vivenciados em outras companhias de dança.

Can social dancing prevent falls in older adults? a protocol of the Dance, Aging, Cognition,Economics (DAnCE) fall prevention randomised controlled trial

Background:  Falls are one of the most common health problems among older people and pose a major economic burden on health care systems. Exercise is an accepted stand-alone fall prevention strategy particularly if it is balance training or regular participation in Tai chi. Dance shares the ‘holistic’ approach of practices such as Tai chi. It is a complex sensorimotor rhythmic activity integrating multiple physical, cognitive and social elements. Small-scale randomised controlled trials have indicated that diverse dance styles can improve measures of balance and mobility in older people, but none of these studies has examined the effect of dance on falls or cognition. This study aims to determine whether participation in social dancing: i) reduces the number of falls; and ii) improves cognitive functions associated with fall risk in older people.

Methods/design: A single-blind, cluster randomised controlled trial of 12 months duration will be conducted. Approximately 450 participants will be recruited from 24 self-care retirement villages that house at least 60 residents each in Sydney, Australia. Village residents without cognitive impairment and obtain medical clearance will be eligible. After comprehensive baseline measurements including physiological and cognitive tests and self-completed questionnaires, villages will be randomised to intervention sites (ballroom or folk dance) or to a wait-listed control using a computer randomisation method that minimises imbalances between villages based on two baseline fall risk measures. Main outcome measures are falls, prospectively measured, and the Trail Making cognitive function test. Cost-effectiveness and cost-utility analyses will be performed.

Discussion: This study offers a novel approach to balance training for older people. As a community-based approach to fall prevention, dance offers older people an opportunity for greater social engagement, thereby making a major contribution to healthy ageing. Providing diversity in exercise programs targeting seniors recognises the heterogeneity of multicultural populations and may further increase the number of taking part in exercise.

Less popular but more democratic? Corrie, Clarkson and the dancing Cru

The central cultural experience of modernity has been change, both the ‘creative destruction’ of existing structures, and the growth, often exponential, of new knowledge. During the twentieth century, the central cultural platform for the collective experience of modernising societies changed too, from page and stage to the screen – from publishing, the press and radio to cinema, television and latterly computer screens. Despite the successive dominance of new media, none has lasted long at the top. The pattern for each was to give way to a successor platform in popularity, but to continue as part of an increasingly crowded media menu. Modern media are supplemented not supplanted by their successors.

Dancing between diversity and consistency : refining assessment in postgraduate degrees in dance

This publication is the culmination of a 2 year Australian Learning and Teaching Council's Project Priority Programs Research Grant which investigates key issues and challenges in developing flexible guidelines lines for best practice in Australian Doctoral and Masters by Research Examination, encompassing the two modes of investigation, written and multi-modal (practice-led/based) theses, their distinctiveness and their potential interplay. The aims of the project were to address issues of assessment legitimacy raised by the entry of practice-orientated dance studies into Australian higher degrees; examine literal embodiment and presence, as opposed to cultural studies about states of embodiment; foreground the validity of questions around subjectivity and corporeal intelligence/s and the reliability of artistic/aesthetic communications, and finally to celebrate ‘performance mastery’(Melrose 2003) as a rigorous and legitimate mode of higher research. The project began with questions which centred around: the functions of higher degree dance research; concepts of 'master-ness’ and ‘doctorateness’; the kinds of languages, structures and processes which may guide candidates, supervisors, examiners and research personnel; the purpose of evaluation/examination; addressing positive and negative attributes of examination. Finally the study examined ways in which academic/professional, writing/dancing, tradition/creation and diversity/consistency relationships might be fostered to embrace change. Over two years, the authors undertook a qualitative national study encompassing a triangulation of semi-structured face to face interviews and industry forums to gather views from the profession, together with an analysis of existing guidelines, and recent literature in the field. The most significant primary data emerged from 74 qualitative interviews with supervisors, examiners, research deans and administrators, and candidates in dance and more broadly across the creative arts. Qualitative data gathered from the two primary sources, was coded and analysed using the NVivo software program. Further perspectives were drawn from international consultant and dance researcher Susan Melrose, as well as publications in the field, and initial feedback from a draft document circulated at the World Dance Alliance Global Summit in July 2008 in Brisbane. Refinement of data occurred in a continual sifting process until the final publication was produced. This process resulted in a set of guidelines in the form of a complex dynamic system for both product and process oriented outcomes of multi-modal theses, along with short position papers on issues which arose from the research such as contested definitions, embodiment and ephemerality, ‘liveness’ in performance research higher degrees, dissolving theory/practice binaries, the relationship between academe and industry, documenting practices and a re-consideration of the viva voce.

"Theatre of the dancing language" : new possibilities in contemporary Australian playwrighting

This study focuses on trends in contemporary Australian playwrighting, discussing recent investigations into the playwrighting process. The study analyses the current state of this country’s playwrighting industry, with a particular focus on programming trends since 1998. It seeks to explore the implications of this current theatrical climate, in particular the types of work most commonly being favoured for production. It argues that Australian plays are under-represented (compared to non-Australian plays) on ‘mainstream’ stages and that audiences might benefit from more challenging modes of writing than the popular three-act realist play models. The thesis argues that ‘New Lyricism’ might fill this position of offering an innovative Australian playwrighting mode. New Lyricism is characterised by a set of common aesthetics, including a non-linear narrative structure, a poetic use of language and magic realism. Several Australian playwrights who have adopted this mode of writing are identified and their works examined. The author’s play Floodlands is presented as a case study and the author’s creative process is examined in light of the published critical discussions about experimental playwriting work.

Choreographing research : supervising the dancing thesis

The dancing doctorate is an interrogative endeavour which can but nurture the art form and forge a beneficial dynamism between those who seek and those who assess the emerging knowledges of dance’. (Vincs, 2009) From 2006-2008 three dance academics from Perth, Brisbane and Melbourne undertook a research project entitled Dancing between Diversity and Consistency: Refining Assessment in Postgraduate Degrees in Dance, funded by the ALTC Priority Projects Program. Although assessment rather than supervision was the primary focus of this research, interviews with 40 examiner/supervisors, 7 research deans and 32 candidates across Australia and across the creative arts, primarily in dance, provide an insight into what might be considered best practice in preparing students for higher research degrees, and the challenges that embodied and experiential knowledges present for supervision. The study also gained the industry perspectives of dance professionals in a series of national forums in 5 cities, based around the value of higher degrees in dance. The qualitative data gathered from these two primary sources was coded and analysed using the NVivo system. Further perspectives were drawn from international consultant and dance researcher Susan Melrose, as well as recent publications in the field. Dance is a young addition to academia and consequently there tends to be a close liaison between the academy and the industry, with a relational fluidity that is both beneficial and problematic. This partially explains why dance research higher degrees are predominantly practice-led (or multi-modal, referring to those theses where practice comprises the substantial examinable component). As a physical, embodied art form, dance engages with the contested territory of legitimising alternative forms of knowledge that do not sit comfortably with accepted norms of research. In supporting research students engaged with dance practice, supervisors traverse the tricky terrain of balancing university academic requirements with studies that are emergent, not only in the practice and attendant theory but in their methodologies and open-ended outcomes; and in an art form in which originality and new knowledge also arises from collaborative creative processes. Formal supervisor accreditation through training is now mandatory in most Australian universities, but it tends to be generic and not address supervisory specificity. This paper offers the kind of alternative proposed by Edwards (2002) that improving postgraduate supervision will be effective if supervisors are empowered to generate their own standards and share best practice; in this case, in ways appropriate to the needs of their discipline and alternative modes of thesis presentation. In order to frame the qualities and processes conducive to this goal, this paper will draw on both the experiences of interviewees and on philosophical premises which underpin the research findings of our study. These include the ongoing challenge of dissolving the binary oppositions of theory and practice, especially in creative arts practice where theory resides in and emerges from the doing as much as in articulating reflection about the doing through what Melrose (2003) terms ‘mixed mode disciplinary practices’. In guiding practitioners through research higher degrees, how do supervisors deal with not only different forms of knowledge but indeed differing modes of knowledge? How can they navigate tensions that occur between the ‘incompatible competencies’ (Candlin, 2000) of the ‘spectating’ academic experts with their ‘irrepressible drive ... to inscribe, interpret, and hence to practise temporal closure’, and practitioner experts who create emergent works of ‘residual unfinishedness’ (Melrose 2006) which are not only embodied but ephemeral, as in the case of live performance?

Dancing doctorates down-under? Defining and assessing ‘doctorateness’ when embodiment enters the thesis

Assessment frames the focus of this paper, which emerges from our collaborative research, Dancing Between Diversity and Consistency: Refining Assessment in Postgraduate Degrees in Dance, funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC). We examine the attributes of danced ‘doctorateness’, giving special attention to those factors in the Australian environment, which may endow resilience to concepts of excellence, independent thinking and originality when kinaesthetic knowledge becomes pivotal to research. Have the small pool of examiners and relationships between academia and the professional artistic environment shaped these doctorates in a particular way? Can these perspectives illuminate and forge parameters by which to legitimate danced insight? These and related issues are interrogated giving voice to supervisors, research deans, candidates and industry professionals across Australia who participated in this research project.