Trajetória(s) da dança jazz cênica no Brasil: ensino, história e performance

Abstract

This thesis investigates the historical trajectory(ies) of the teaching of theatrical jazz dance in Brazil, analyzing processes of transmission, adaptation, and transculturation from its introduction in the country up to 2026. The research understands jazz dance as a performance that operates through embodied behaviors and repertoires transmitted across generations. In the light of performance studies and drawing on a performative ethnography methodology, the researcher, who is also a co-participant in the investigated community, collected data through interviews with individuals who currently teach or have taught jazz dance in Brazil, organized into three chronological groups, as well as through consultation of bibliographic collections, documentaries, videos on social media, and personal archival materials of interlocutors. The study identifies that jazz teaching in Brazil has been constituted primarily through exchanges with the United States and short-term courses, with a predominant focus on technical transmission to the detriment of historical contextualization and the Afro-diasporic origins of the dance. It shows that North American methodologies have been selectively assimilated, giving rise to local teaching modes such as choreographed warm-ups, which are configured as Brazilianized transmission technologies. Dancers/teachers such as Lennie Dale, Vilma Vernon, Marly Tavares, Carlota Portella, Joyce Kermann, and Roseli Rodrigues stand out as key agents in the consolidation and dissemination of jazz dance throughout the country, fostering its adaptation to Brazilian musicality and corporeality. The analysis reveals that, although there is widespread recognition of the Afro-diasporic roots of jazz, this knowledge is rarely translated into explicit pedagogical practices, producing historical erasures and tensions between the preservation of Afro-diasporic elements and the influence of Eurocentric aesthetics derived from ballet and modern dance. The study problematizes the notion of a “Brazilian jazz,” arguing that, rather than a new style, what emerges is a singular way of dancing, marked by the “accents” and “swings” of Brazilian bodies, and it contributes to filling an academic gap in the historiography of jazz dance teaching in Brazil at the doctoral level, offering support to rethink pedagogical practices that integrate technique, history, and critical awareness while valuing Afro-diasporic contributions to this artistic language.