Short Abstract:

Experiencing research living and dancing the theoretical model of Biodanza created by anthropologist Roland Toro is the purpose of this Lab. Based on Toro’s “Science of Movement”, this space opens up for discovering all dimensions of being human as a way to chart anthropology’s movements. Literally.

Long Abstract:

During the II Congresso Latino Americano of Biodanza (São Paulo), in 1984, the Chilean psychologist and anthropologist Rolando Toro Araneda takes an innovative research path into proposing a systemic model for the scientific organization of the different classes of the human body’s movements. This theoretical model, if not a Science of Movement, as he proposed, went far beyond psychomotricity and a set of kinesis—for Toro, the movement of the body was rather a vision and an expression of the whole, of the organism as a hologram in progressive and profound integration.

Toro’s reevaluation of the body as an aspect of the totality of the human experience had its own manifestation and system development: Biodanza. This laboratory thus provides space for conference participants to chart anthropology’s movements in situ through an introductory Biodanza class on Toro’s Science of Movement, providing therein what he himself called a vivência, i.e. an experience of life. This class combines movement, music, and group conviviality and is characted by experimentation, interaction, and novelty in so far as research is learned and lived empirically. Participants thus naturally become their own object of observation and awareness, cultivating possibilities of surprise and discovery. In addition, this laboratory facilitates the emergence of synergies and integration between the intellectual, physical, energetic, and emotional dimensions of the human well-being within contexts of group conviviality, pairing up with the pannel “Whose Identity: Anthropological Contributions Towards our Shared Humanity”.