Un violador en tu camino and black lives matter: gestures, media and the political agency of vulnerability

The postdoctoral project “Un violador en tu camino and Black Lives Matter: Gestures, Media, and The Political Agency of Vulnerability” investigates the gesturing of political actions within the feminist movement Un violador en tu camino (November 2019) and the anti-racist movement Black Lives Matter (June 2020). It aims to study how these political actions express through gestures and, on a larger scale, choreographies, an embodied power to act, capable of questioning the alleged incompatibility between vulnerability and political action. This work addresses the audiovisual productions that have participated in the diffusion and awareness of these two protest movements, notably through social networks. It analyzes, lists and deciphers the gestural and choreographic content of these images through the approach of dance studies. Thus, this study supports the hypothesis that the palpable effects deployed by these choreographic gestures –  whether it be their issues of spatiality and temporality, or their effects of corporeality, collectivity, resistance, fragility and rebellion – that these gestures make it possible to go beyond the social and political regime of vulnerability that is unequally distributed according to categories of gender and race.

Biography

Luar Maria Escobar is a choreographer, dancer, researcher and teacher. With a doctorate in dance and performing arts, her dissertation, entitled “From Choreography to the Dramaturgy of Gesture: mutations of Choreographic Practices in the Theater o Rio de Janeiro,” was completed under he joint supervision of the University of Paris-8 and the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO). She defended in 2019. Her research, which has been presented and published in Brazil, Portugal and France, is dedicated to exploring human gesture at the juncture of the palpable and the meaningful, in dance, theater and the social world. She has taken part in the organization of several international scientific events on gesture and bodily dramaturgy. She has also taught at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), PUC-Rio and the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO) in both dance and theater degrees. In 2021, she obtained a post-doctoral contract at EUR ArTeC (University of Paris-8, EA 1572) to carry out the research project entitled “Un violador en tu camino and Black Lives Matter: Gestures, Media, and The Political Agency of Vulnerability.” Currently, she is an associate researcher at the laboratory Danse, Geste et Corporéité (Dance, Gesture, and Corporality) of the University of Paris 8.

In the artistic field, after training in contemporary dance at the Angel Vianna School, Luar Maria Escobar collaborated with several Brazilian companies and artists, such as Eleonora Fabião, Dani Lima and Intrépida Trupe, in theatrical dance and performance projects. Since 2010, she has been working with the MIÚDA collectivity and develops her own creations in which she explores the “dramaturgy of gesture.” In 2020, she was awarded an artistic residency by the French Institute at the Cité internationale des arts de Paris. She is currently developing the third part of a choreographic triptych begun during this residency and dedicated to the question of the migration of gestures.

PROJECT TEAM

Tutor: Julie Perrin (Lecturer, Department of Dance University of Paris 8)