Entre sessions e batalhas na dança Krump: Performance, improvisação e meu corpo krumper

Abstract

This paper investigated the practice of improvisation in the construction of Krump performance. Based on autoethnography, the following procedures were used: field research at Krump events, preparation of a logbook with records of observations made, interviews with dancers, and bibliographic research with collection of articles and non-academic material, such as publications on social networks, videos on YouTube, and DVDs. The dissertation presents a detailed study of Krump Culture, as it is understood by its practitioners, while dancing with terminologies and investigating its elements such as fam, big homies, lil homies, sessions, battles, and the sense of community. It is a dance of Afro-diasporic origin that incorporates elements such as the circle, orality, resistance, and identity. Knowledge in Krump has been systematized in a unique way throughout its history and organized by a series of vocabulary that are described in this paper. In this sense, we sought to dialogue with the idea of performance, going through Richard Schechner's notion and the dimension of improvisation combined with the concept of freestyle, popularly used by dancers, as well as other elements that contextualize the krumper's performance, the technical-expressive description of improvisation with the concepts of get off, musicality and character and the possible ways of learning this dance. It is concluded that improvisation is an intrinsic and formative practice in the context of Krump, as it is an element of community bonding for practitioners, at the same time as it is the basis for the construction of meanings in the krumper's life, as self-affirmation and overcoming. In this way, the dissertation also describes the path of the researcher-artist-Krumper as she reflects on her own experiences regarding teaching and learning within a fam and in the oral tradition in the Krump community, because, while she read, she fed the logbook, wrote this text, constructed my performances in Krump, embodying the dissertation.