Presentation of the work “The Dance of Life and the Life of Dance” by Isabel Baltazar

The book Dança da Vida e a Vida da Dança (The Dance of Life and the Life of Dance) by CEIS20 researcher Isabel Baltazar and Eduardo Azevedo Couto, will be presented this Sunday, 13 November, at 14:45 in the Auditorium of the Camilo Castelo Secondary School in Famalicão. The book will be presented by José Lima, coordinator of the National Plan for Sports Ethics (PNED), and by Nuno José Corte-Real Correia Alves, of the Faculty of Sports Sciences of the University of Porto. The book is published by Afrontamento.

Manuel Sérgio
The book A Dança da Vida e a Vida da Dança (The Dance of Life and the Life of Dance) a magnificent book by Professor Isabel Baltasar, PhD, is an interdisciplinary work by an undeniably serious scholar who seeks to apply sports ethics to sports dance. “Ethical consciousness presupposes the existence of a conscious agent, i.e. an agent who knows the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, permitted and prohibited, virtue and vice (…).The ethical or moral subject must satisfy the following conditions: to be aware of oneself and of others (…); to be endowed with will (…); to be responsible, i.e. to recognise oneself as the author of the action and to assess its effects and consequences on oneself and on others; to be free (…). The ethical field is thus made up of two closely related poles: the agent or moral subject and the moral values or ethical virtues” (Marilena Chauí, “Convite à Filosofia”, Editora Ática, S. Paulo, 1999, pp. 337/338)".

José Lima
When we delve into this work, the first thing that strikes us is the sense of the “unexpected”. Combining the theme of dance with ethics is neither an easy nor an immediate task. We are therefore curious to see where this work will “take us”. When we read Dança é vida e a vida é dança, the strange becomes entrenched within us, and this link between dance and ethics is interestingly established by the authors, Eduardo Couto and Isabel Baltazar. The latter is an ambassador for the National Plan for Ethics in Sport and has been an excellent collaborator and disseminator of sports ethics throughout its existence, with her unique knowledge and enthusiasm. I also congratulate the Portuguese Sports Dance Federation, which has sponsored this book and features prominently therein. This is an excellent way of linking sport and ethics, given that sports federations, by virtue of their public service status, must be at the forefront of promoting ethics and values in sport.