When Dance Touches Us: meanings, ethics, and presence in practices with touch in the curriculum.

Abstract

This article presents an excerpt of the research concerning six dance teachers in southern public Brazilian schools, describing dance classes within the Art curriculum through an ethnographic approach. The text analyzes dance practices in which male and female students touch each other. Based on Michel Foucault's theoretical perspective, this study identifies that such practices produce tensions with technologies of production of subjectbodies at the school, challenging hegemonic codes of skin and touching. The research points out the effects of dance practices with touch, mainly regarding: a) the suspension of embodied cultural meanings; b) emergence of the presence dimension; and c) ethical work.