Dancing for the elephants

• Autor(a) principal: Sales, Ana Raquel Fernando de
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/36614
• topic: Loxodonta africana; Conservation; Ethology; Dance education; Environmental education; Environmental awareness

Several species are disappearing from the globe as human populations increase. One of the greatest examples of this is Loxodonta africana, which faces an uncertain future due to the anthropogenic pressures of which it has been a victim over time. If, on the one hand, pressures such as habitat loss and human-elephant conflict (HEC) highlight the importance of local conservation (where elephants naturally inhabit), poaching, climate change and other human threats remind us of the urgency of acting on a global scale. The existence of a planet with stable elephant populations depends not only on a strong enforcement of national and international legislation, but also on a greater commitment to research and education. Scientific research makes it possible to understand the behaviour and daily needs of the species, in addition to promoting communication with decision makers and stakeholders and helping in the search for mitigation measures. In turn, education empowers local communities and enables the developing of the future conservationists. The sharing of scientific content through art has been explored and has shown potential to support and innovate traditional education. Interpreting elephants’ behaviour through dance makes the similarities between human and non-human bodies quite noticeable, which may allow a better understanding of the species and allow it to be more easily tolerated. Furthermore, dance has the ability to expose information and make people more sensitive and aware. This work emerged from the aspiration to develop and apply methodologies that link science and art. For this, the potential of combining environmental education and dance was investigated in two countries: Portugal and Botswana. In the first, a dance piece was created, through a choreographic process developed with students from a dance school, focusing on elephants behaviour and the threat of poaching. After that, a lecture about the project and the dance piece were presented to an audience. In the second, several dance improvisation workshops took place in a regular school (school without dance teaching) that allowed the exploration of different behaviours of elephants, as well as themes such as HEC. For both situations, the effectiveness of the methodologies used to educate and raise awareness was evaluated through surveys and their analysis. The results suggest that the level of knowledge and opinion of young people has evolved positively over the project. Thus, an alternative approach to raising awareness among young people and connect them with elephants by stimulating their emotions is presented here, promoting elephant conservation, while teaching the ethology of the species and exposing the biggest threats faced by it.