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This article is part of a series of book reviews idança started to publish in the end of 2008 on the occasion of the good phase for publications in the dance area. The first review was written by researcher Nirvana Marinho about the book ‘Dança Cênica – pesquisas em dança volume 1′, organized by Jussara Xavier, Sandra Meyer and Vera Torres. The second title to be analyzed was ‘Zdenek Hampl – Constante Movimento’, by Christianne Galdino. Click here to read the previous texts.

The initiative of publishing dance book reviews carried out by electronic magazine idança, including academic research that have become books, strongly collaborates for the broadcast of ideas and also exercises of critical reflection about written production in this field of knowledge.

This review is about a doctorate level academic research carried out by professor, researcher and dance critic Fabiana Dultra Britto. The research was made in PUC-SP Communication and Semiotics course, under the orientation of professor and researcher Helena Katz. The publication of the book Temporalidade em Dança: parâmetros para uma história contemporânea is part of corpoespaçotempo trilogy, organized as cultural action by FID (Fórum Internacional de Dança), which started with the publication of Helena Katz’s book Um, Dois, Três: a dança é o pensamento do corpo. The last part of the trilogy is expected for the end of 2009 and will be the publication of a book by professor and researcher Dulce Aquino, current director of UFBA dance school.

The title of the book already announces the argumentative complexity and the network of information, ideas, concepts and findings handled by the author. There is pressing concern to articulate her own ideas with those of other authors, which reinforces the idea of co-authorship and proposal sharing. Already in the index it is possible to observe a different way to organize the book parts, demonstrating it is important to propose exercises of understanding for the readers, exercises guided by metaphorically specialized denominations carefully presented throughout the text.

From chapter Carta das Des/Intenções (Letter of Des/Intention) to Canteiro de Obras (Building Site) the reader reaches the discussion of Como é o que Existe (How Does it Exist) to meet with arguments demonstrating that Trajetória Histórica não é um Processo Evolutiva (Historical Path is not an Evolutionary Process); that A Dança é um Sistema CoevolutivoEvolução é outra História (Evolution is Another Story) and the proposition of Exercícios de Equivalência (Equivalent Exercises). Complementing the ideas discussed, the author adds in the supplements titles of national publications of dance books along with a brief comment, concerned in presenting the authors to the readers. She also exposes the bibliography separated by argumentative themes, with careful academic zeal with those interested in giving continuity to the studies presented there.

The whole work aims at discussing the issue of temporality in dance offering new parameters that collaborate with studies in dance historiography. To do so, it builds an investigative map aiming to inquire how the theoretical pattern of historiography can explain “the evolutionary meaning of the process of dance historic transformation[…]” (p.13). The dialogue with authors Ilya Prigogine, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Helena Katz, Jorge Vieira among others collaborates with the organization of the author’s thinking about the way dance history has been presented to those interested in dance, including those in Universities, academies, artistic groups, NGO’s, community groups and formal education institutions. There are many people interested in the subject, but their number is still discrepant with those who publish in their ideas and understandings about national and international dance history in our country.

The approximation with those theorists allows the author to weave an argumentative texture that dialogues and questions the reality of historical information about dance in Brazil by indicating that it is possible to work with an understanding of history as process, instead of understanding it as isolated events that express frail relationships of space and time. Instead of reproducing concepts and transporting them for discourse purposes, the author links understandings and dance facts with theoretical concepts compatible with the critical principles she holds on to. For the author it is important to “[…]get dance closer to the logical principles and scientific concepts that agree with its way of existing in the world, configure the body and articulate in time[…]” (p.14). This theoretical texture is placed in the parts of the book that deal with affinities between dance and scientific premises without the intention of merging concepts, presenting them instead in their theoretical configuration in a relational way, compatible with the understanding of its context.

In the Equivalence Exercises chapter, the author displays approximative considerations about themes that provoke the taking of position and conceptual indication, that are: framing issues; identity/nationality; emergence; patterns of coordination between theory and dance; adaptative flexibility; the thesis. In every exercise the focus turns to contemporary dance, for the author consider it to “express a non-hierarchical relationship logic between body and the world […] organizes itself in a way similar to a metalinguistic operations, as it transfers to each compositional act the roles of generator and manager of its own structural rules” (p. 15). The descriptive-argumentative exercises expose the author’s responsibility and critical thinking in dealing with themes related to artistic production. It is suitable to point out that the choice of artists was careful and the same goes to the choice of theorists, they converge through different world views, space and time.

The theoretical conceptions are presented in co-relation with artistic conceptions that are part of the author’s artistic-critical-argumentative ensemble. The theoretical ideas about complexity (Prigogine), meme and design (Dawkins), dance as the thinking of the body (Katz) and the systemic parameters of the systems theory (Uemov and Vieira) are highlighted and connected to ideas/artistic productions expressed in FID 2001 with The Show Must Go On (Jérôme Bel), Mono Subjects (Thomas Lehmen), Not To Know (Benoit Lachambre), Self Unfinished (Xavier Le Roy), Au Bord dês Métaphores (Rachid Ouramdane)Still Distinguished (Maria de La Ribot), Muzz and Lamont Earth Observatory (Sarah Chase), The Princess Project (Vicent Dunoyer), Summerspace and Biped (Merce Cunningham);  El Trilogy (Trisha Brown),  I sais I (Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker), Artérias: quando se perde o norte (Cis 2 Nova Dança), Cravos (Pina Baush), MTD -90; O Corpo ( Rodrigo Perdeneiras/Grupo Corpo).The author brings into her argumentative construction the understanding of history through the perspective of asymmetrical temporality to interpret and describe cultural systems and proposes that dance history should be understood not as “local events that happen in a given point in space and in a given instant in history” (p. 52), but as continuous and diffuse processes. That is because “[…] individuals and artistic works are unique, but irremediably implicated in the same global activity of organizing time – history” (p. 52).

The processual and asymmetric meanings proposed by the author to think about dance and dance history are compatible with considerations about the difference between juxtaposition and interaction and “[…] of the interaction dynamic between the components of such ensembles (steps, happenings) to handle them as systems and understand it in its complexity. The understanding of dance, history and historiography weaved by Fabiana Britto conducts the reader in non-linear exercises of thinking at the same time it is an invitation to think writings about dance from a critical-reflective perspective. It is important to highlight that the scarce publication of dance in our country is dealt by the author not as dance backwardness, but as “rhythmic mismatch between the way it takes place and the up-to-date intellectual production about its occurrence. For lack of competent theoretical resources to deal with conceptually sophisticated issues, the difficult themes related to its artistic specificity have remained lodged in the realm of clichés and poetic licenses […]” (p. 20).

This consideration conducts to the reflection about the how thinking/discussing/making dance is carried out by teachers, artists, researchers, among others. It also calls for reflection about the expansion of higher education in dance in the country and about the relationship between LDB 5692/96. Thus, the publication of those ideas in book format significantly collaborates with the field of dance and is an invitation for a challenging, complex and instigating reading exercise, indispensable for those who deal with dance respecting its specificities and those who work to promote the understanding of its complexity.

Jussara Sobreira Setenta is professor, researcher and dance artist. Teaches at Universidade Federal da Bahia in graduate and post graduate courses. Author of the book O Fazer-Dizer do Corpo: dança e performatividade, published in 2008.