Dance strategy of health promotion for child from public school of Fortaleza - Ceará- Brazil

The present study, characterized as having a qualitative nature, aimed at investigating the meaning of dance education, in order to foster a transforming action towards promoting health and also allowing social ascension of children who are students of a municipal public school from Fortaleza City in Ceará, Brazil. We tried to describe the profile of those children and identified the specific aspects of their daily lives and also to reveal some relevant cultural factors of that context. As methodology approach, we used an interventionist action which is peculiar to research action through the dance education indicated, mainly by Nanni (2001), together with the participative observation and semi-structured interviews concerning the collection technique. The analysis of data was done according to Bardin (2004), which recorded the depth of the manifested and latent content, valuing the meaning of the messages and the subjective aspects, which are intrinsic in social research. As a result, it was revealed, among other things, the fact that dance has the power of fostering professional prospects and also, in the category “Dance as an escape instrument”, the fact that, when children dance, the contextual problems related to poverty decrease. We consider that dance education is an activity that represents an instrument of educative transforming and cultural training that is strongly appreciated by all those who can experience it. Its spread in municipal public schools in the City of Fortaleza, however, is rare. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out additional research to this casuistry.