Brincando e dançando e sentindo a canção: entrelaçamentos entre dançar, brincar e se-movimentar

Abstract

This paper starts from my experience as a Physical Education teacher, working since 2014 with the final years of elementary school in a state school in Santa Maria - RS, Brazil, where I have noticed that spontaneity, creativity and imagination are already faded traits in the practices of most children, who are already entering the path of adolescence. This is a theoretical research that has as its background my teaching experience, which involves class diaries, works and reflections built with the classes, as well as my experiences with the universe of dances. I start the journey reflecting on the voids that run through school and haunt school physical education. Involvement in play, sensitivity to let movement and imagination flow, permission to be who we really are, are slowly being replaced by haste, the pursuit of functionality, models that make our lives easier, technologies that anesthetize us and consume our time to create, play and se-movimentar. Where did that spontaneity that moved the playing of children hide? Do we really stop playing when we leave childhood? Wouldn't dance be a way of play when childhood moves away? These and other questions prompted the development of the research, which presents as its central question: how can dance be considered a path of possible (re) encounters with play? Based on this question, the research aimed to investigate possible intertwining of dance and play and se-movimentar. Given the context presented, I sought to understand the (mis) configurations of times and spaces of play amidst the contexts and transformations that permeate adolescence, as well as the presence of dance among adolescents. Next, I turned my attention to the brincantes and their brincares dançantes in the manifestations of popular culture, in order to understand the dance in its approximations with the play and se-movimentar, as a possible space and time of adolescent give themselves. Finally, I tried to make reflections on physical education and dance at school. I consider that this research trajectory does not lead us to a final result, does not bring recipes of dance classes at school, nor even can define the best strategy for dance to be a possible way for (re) encounters with play. But it leads us like a circle of circular dances, step by step, inviting us to reflect on the themes in question. The mandala drawn at the end of the dance opens other portals, invites us to further reflection. But it also shows that dance and play intertwine from their deepest roots, are verbs that move sensitivities, and these intertwining can be perceived as a circle, without a beginning and without an end, where dance proves to be a possible way for (re)encounters with play, while play is a creative impulse for dance to happen. Thus, it is urgent the presence of dances at schools, especially popular dances. It is urgent a more playful (physical) education.