From the social construction to the artistic desconstruction of the body on stage. An analisis of the dance of Corpornô

Abstract

The recurrence of nudity in contemporary dance creations in Brazil presents the following issue: how does the artistic production of the body on stage take part in the social construction of the body in the brazilian society? This text aims at showing a paradox: although the creators of the performance called Corpornô, based their project on a conception of the body as a symbol of human nature, they also seek to desconstruct the ordinary representations of the body in dance. This conflicting conception of the body seen as a product of a socio-historical construction to be desconstructed, on the one side, and as an artistic instrument for individual libertation on the other side, appears in the choreography as well as in the politicised discourse associated with the creative process. This text is, then, about re-signifying sociologically the politico-artistic act of placing on stage naked and erotized dancers, analyzing with a critical eye the figure of the contemporary artist, his discourses on transgression, his political acts of “re-appropriation” of the body against constraining social norms. It is only in this way that it becomes possible to comprehend these aparently emancipatory processes that end up reinforcing the historical process of the constitution of the modern individual.