Acessibilidade / Reportar erro

Brazilian Dancers: bodies exhibited in an American circus

Abstract

In this paper, I analyze the materialization processes of bodies within an circus aesthetic regime whose pillar is the production and celebration of differences. In other words, I call attention to the rules established by one of the largest and most traditional circus of the United States as constituting not only nationalized bodies, but also the marketable ones. I will explore through an intersectional approach discourses about Brazil forward on advertising catalogs sold during the last fifteen years; I will describe practices carried out during a audition that took place in Rio de Janeiro in 2013; and finally analyse the individual efforts towards making themselves beautiful, virtuous and normative bodies. If, on the one hand, the marketable is the Brazilian energetic body, on the other, the training in dance in terms of the similarity to the icons of pop American industry are critical to the productivity. In this way emerges a link between the notion of Brazilian energy as power to excitability of the audience and the establishment of an effective labor force created in line to globalized standards.

Brazil; Body; Intersecionality; Dance; Circus

Núcleo de Estudos de Gênero - Pagu Universidade Estadual de Campinas, PAGU Cidade Universitária "Zeferino Vaz", Rua Cora Coralina, 100, 13083-896, Campinas - São Paulo - Brasil, Tel.: (55 19) 3521 7873, (55 19) 3521 1704 - Campinas - SP - Brazil
E-mail: cadpagu@unicamp.br