Uma escola de graça, saúde e beleza: Natália Lessa, a dança e a educação da feminilidade

Abstract

Natália Victor Lessa, teacher whose professional career in dance education for girls is the subject of this research, graduated and lectured for 30 years in the chair of the Physical Education, at Grupo Escolar Barão do Rio Branco, and for 50 years in the Curso Natália Lessa, created in 1934. Teaching only girls, she founded the first private space specializing in teaching dance in Belo Horizonte - MG. Natália Lessa gave lectures and made presentations with your students in public spaces during a period marked by innovations in the ways of being and living in the city. The central hypothesis of this research is that its practices in dance education for girls led to a new direction for the education of femininity in Belo Horizonte, becoming representative reference in this ambiance. The historical and cultural context in which lived the students, the teacher and the society that accompanied his work, created scenes in the city that despite porosities, elicited a rich set of meanings for the female training during this period. The identification and perception of those appropriations, practices and possible representations were the guiding elements for the development of research whose common thread was the trajectory of Natália Lessa. From the analysis of different sources, we have identified, in the Curso, the pedagogical intention to educate, through dance, the femininity of the girls following the ideologies in circulation. We realize that the proposed Natália Lessa caused few strangeness, represented safely ways to educate, already legitimized by the school, recognized and appreciated by the local society. Since the beginning of his career, the statements and disclosures made by Natália about the Curso presented it as an educational and female activity, with the objectives to develop qualities and skills related to three areas: grace, health and beauty, involving issues of discipline, rhythm and eugenics. These were the basic requirements of the proposed of Natália Lessa that attracted families in search of a complementary education for their daughters, a possibility of refinement of femininity through dance.