Entre corpos, criações e narrativas: um estudo sobre o encontro da dança com crianças na educação infantil

Abstract

This research arises from the interest in creating a scenic show for children. The UFRJ Early Childhood Education School (known as EEI-UFRJ) was the childhood territory chosen to create and to develop through the dance language as a source for the creative process “Vagalumeando”. From this experience came the interest in continuing thinking about dance language in early childhood education, considering artistic-pedagogical practices, knowing that in the first stage of basic education, a more ludic approach should be considered. Following that perspective, the questions that guided the study were: what do children's bodies express and what do we learn from them dancing in early childhood education? What are the dance contributions to the creative bodies’ formation since early childhood education? This is qualitative research, in which listening and dialoguing with children was a fundamental condition throughout the investigative process. Considering an investigation crossed by the Covid-19 pandemic, it was chosen to revisit the artistic-pedagogical practices carried out in dance projects developed at EEI-UFRJ, from 2016 to 2018, through records produced at the time, as well as talking to some children who participated in the project, seeking memories and narratives of their dancing experiences at school, through remote meetings held individually and in groups. For this research purposes, child is understood as a historical-cultural actor, active, with rights, producer of knowledge and culture, having as main theoretical references Benjamim (2009), Vigostski (2018), Aquino (2005), Pereira (2012), Sarmento (2007), among others. Dancing in early childhood education can meet children's demand for more time-space to experience the body in movement, instigating and supporting their bodily curiosity and creative experiences, bringing out the uniqueness and power of their bodies. Art is a right for everyone from a young age, and other perspectives on dance in childhood and beyond early childhood education are necessary. It is also necessary, in other dance spaces, to bring children and childhood into the scene in artistic scenic production, in dancing graduation, in the granting of theater guidelines for children, in researches. Finally, this research defends the idea of Dancing WITH children as a proposal aimed at the expansion and freedom of bodies, reaffirming Freire's thinking on education as a practice of freedom and the contemporary need for decolonial knowledge production.