Abstract
This article is the result of ethnographic fieldwork among amateur dancers, mainly among gay adolescents from the outskirts of Salvador de Bahia (Brazil), who label themselves as “flexible”. This self-definition arises out of bodily flexibility techniques, cultivated through intense physical work. By focusing on specific training situations, such as stretching exercises, I trace understand how the “flexible” body is built. I propose that the language mobilized by these young people offer an important guide to understanding the distinctive elements of this practice. The practitioners’ accounts and my own observations of the practice indicate that the embodiment of acrobatic skills occurs in a process that weaves body and environment. Following Ingold, I argue that an ecological approach help us to comprehend this kinesthetic practice as spatial realization, as well as providing useful insights into its learning practices exploring the richly sensory dimension of learning practices and development of motor sensibilities, such as the sound and the imperative pain experience. Furthermore, I analyze how my interlocutors’ concept of body fits the theoretical idea of how bodies should not be defined by what they are, but rather by what they are able to do.
Highlights
After almost a decade of experience with dance culture among gay teenagers of color who live on the outskirts of the city of Salvador de Bahia, I have heard and observed many stories that testify to the personal, physical, and real involvement of many of them with dance
The majority of whom are participants or ex-members of such dance groups, are part of that section of the gay community for whom this artistic activity seems to offer an environment of playful sociability sufficiently open to an exploratory attitude in terms of a kinesthetics that is non-normative in relation to gender
Many of the movements that they perform, such as jumps with the legs far apart, acrobatic maneuvers and gestures that position the torso out of vertical axis, are characteristic of rhythmic gymnastics and contortionism–gymnastic modalities that require extreme flexibility. These gymnastic movements present an affinity, for example, with the pelvic and sexualized movements performed in choreographies of some of these dance genres
Summary
After almost a decade of experience with dance culture among gay teenagers of color who live on the outskirts of the city of Salvador de Bahia, I have heard and observed many stories that testify to the personal, physical, and real involvement of many of them with dance. Even if the findings of the study provide elements for a dialogue with authors whose ideas are useful for the discussion that I undertake regarding the body and learning processes, such as John Dewey (2004), Marcel Mauss (2007) and Bruno Latour (2004), a large part of the analysis that follows is informed by the anthropology of Tim Ingold His theoretical elaborations are based on the understanding that we are immersed in a world that is not neutral or merely a receptacle of actions, but is an environment that is itself, with its materials, active, and with which we are actively engaged. The topics considered here regarding the theme of the assimilation of these gymnastic abilities emerge, through the descriptions produced through participant observation, but from the retelling of the flexible gay men In this direction, the language of my research participants employs expressions that are key to understanding the practice and of the physical transformation that makes them competent to act in the “dance world”. I outline some methodological considerations regarding this research and, before proceeding with the analysis itself, I show an ethnographic vignette in which a flexible gay is in action
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