Identidade física, pessoal, institucional e espiritual: etnografia embodied de uma companhia de ballet

Abstract

The present research reflected upon the theme identity in organizations, especially how the physical, personal, institutional e spiritual are bodily lived (embodied) by the dancers at a Dance Company. The theorical research was developed upon three main subjects: dance - specifically ballet, identity and embodiment. There are many studies with cognitiverepresentational perspective at the fields of Anthropology, Sociology and at Organisational Research and Management that deny the development of a theorical ground envolving the body and its embodied analysis as a methodological and epistemological resource to comprehend identity. Far from representational, there is an analysis dimension named embodiment, that conceives the body as the center of formation of the people lived world and pratice, builded historically and culturally by their bodily perceptions. In this perspective theories of embodiment such as phenomenology, feminist, of practice, postmodern and cultural, recognize the body as locus of multiple social activities. Therefore the importance of inclusion of analysis of embodiment at identity studies, as it is impossible to think organizations as before or transcendent of human beings. To investigate the subject of identity in a Dance Company through the body (dancer) as a methodological and epistemological resource has been made a qualitative empirical research through ethnography, named here as embodied ethnography. It was based in a field diary, interviews and documents. Living the ethnographic method made me include analysis categories of the body (dancer) in relation with space, time, weight, sthrenght, movement dynamics, voice, senses hearing, vision, touch, taste, smell, an ethnography guided by the senses and emotions of the researched bodies specially the dancers- in training, rehearsals and performances. This embodied etnography resulted in discussions upon: the Identity Organisational Theory, about embodied identity at organizations; theorical-methodologic, about embodied etnography; an specific empyrical-management subject at this Dance Company, by the perspective of institutional identity; and at the social empirical subject, about contributions of identity to the field of dance at a globalized context of mass culture. Therefore all these subjects have potential to be explored in future research.