Five, six, seven, eight – bucket, cloth, hands and floor: counterchoreographic (Per)Formative Proposals

Abstract

In this paper we present some aspects of the research developed in the project Cartographies of the Body in the City, between 2015 and 2019, carried out by the Núcleo de Pesquisa, Estudos e Encontros em Dança - onucleo/UFRJ. The practices and reflections proposed here were initially discussed in the doctoral thesis "Choreographies and countercoreographies of uprising: engaging dance, writing and femininity" (2019), from the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. We start from some reflections on the colonial legacy of dance when understood as synonymous with choreography, in a brief review of the history of the choreographic. Based on this idea, we propose the use of the term countercoreography as a praxis that guides artistic experimentations and pedagogical practices, summoned by a force of uprising against the secular values that structure the traditional system of teaching stage dances associated with choreography. Next, we present one of the (Per)Formative Counterchoreographic Proposals developed by onucleo: "Collective cleaning of the floor", highlighting the main questions unfolded in these.