Movement and expressiveness

Educational dance for students with intellectual disabilities

Abstract

This article is the result of research on dance and education that investigated the bodily trials of students with intellectual disabilities. It pressuposes that one can develop expressivity by using dancing movements in space and time in school and that dance finds ways to enhance creative so as to dissociate the practice based on 'follow the master' or 'do as I do', which privileges standardized choreographies with television references and does cope with the subjectivity within student's creation and responses. It is a pedagogical study guided by art and that sought not to neglect the references in dance produced culturally and perceived in the context of the investigation. The research is based on the theoretical approach of Rudolf Laban on the movement for the construction of a proposal of educational dance for students with intellectual disabilities. Laban’s theory helped to shape the thematic categories for this work: Body, Space, Group and Creation which were established to analyze expressiveness within the experiments that focused on the perception of the body in the relationship of the body with the space and the creative process of one’s body movement. In this context, the role of art for meaningful learning, was highlighted, whose exercise of otherness permeated the understanding of coexistence with differences. The methodological possibility presented is that of action research, which offers support for reflecting and transforming challenging pedagogical actions. It was perceived the construction of meanings provoked by the dance in the interaction with the other and in the construction of an accessible practice that values the presence of each body, in its expressive possibilities.