CARLOS PAGÉS · FEB 1, 2019 · READING TIME: 16 MINUTES
What led Biodanza - "a system of social change" as defined by its creator Rolando Toro Araneda - to become a registered trademark under the control of a multinational company? How was "the conspiracy of love" — which had been achieved through an emerging democratic and community organization in the late 1980s — transformed into a private business aimed at accumulating wealth and conquering new markets? In order to visualize a different future it is essential to ask ourselves these questions. In the mid-1990s Biodanza became an international company called IBF (International Biocentric Foundation; not a true "foundation" as the name suggests, but a limited company based in Ireland). However, the process that led to its creation and to the registration of the “Biodanza ©” brand began a few years earlier.
The first step towards the privatization of Biodanza was the appropriation of the operational control of the movement in the early 1990s. Carrying out a structural transformation - which would make private and proprietary what until then had been open and communal - required dismantling the democratization processes launched by ALAB (Latin American Association of Biodanza) since 1989. This was done by unilaterally dismissing ALAB's then-president (democratically elected in an assembly) and through various interventions by the schools most representative of this model - e.g. the School of Biodanza of Buenos Aires (EBBA) in 1993.
To achieve these objectives, a smear campaign was launched, books, texts and communications were censored, and boycotts were carried out against schools with the aim of questioning the work of its directors, thus justifying their replacement by Rolando Toro, who put in place people from his own family. Nepotism, the main characteristic of biodanza's institutional structure, has its origin here. This entire process is perfectly documented through direct testimonies, communications, personal and open letters and telegrams, as well as other written records.
Every political appropriation maneuver needs to be affirmed within the symbolic order, since this is what ensures the appropriation to be sustained and perpetuated. To achieve this purpose, the pedagogical syllabus of the schools was directly intervened with. One of the first measures was to remove/delete all the socio-political content of Rolando Toro's texts. In the notes used for the training of facilitators in IBF schools there are no references to Toro's most critical texts, which had been previously collected and published in the original volumes of ALAB. The passages that defined social change as the main objective of biodanza were also removed: “Biodanza is a system of social change focused on the community and not on the client. Our priority is to solve the world's survival problems. All personal conflicts stem, in truth, from socio-historical situations.” (RT). The same was done with other critical texts about individual therapies, which emphasized political commitment and sociocultural transformation, e.g. "What interests us is the transformation of values rather than re-parenting" (RT). The idea of a constructive identity, in a constant process of becoming through social interaction - "a kind of palimpsest with successive recordings and modifications" (Toro) - was also trashed. The system's social and political perspective was replaced by the primacy of biologism, naturalism and, in the most extreme cases, by a marked bias of social Darwinism that legitimizes socioeconomic inequalities and favours the creation of elites, justifying it through natural gifts (not in Toro's texts but in several "re-interpretations" of his work).
Let's look at a clear example of this attempt to transform biodanza's basic concerns and concepts.
"What is the great merit of being intelligent? None, just being born that way. Succeeding in life, having a lot of money or professional success, is only the consequence of a gift that nature gave to some and not to others. What is our merit then? Why did nature give a few more attributes to some than to others? Because it does not matter who receives them: they are gifts for the species. Nature gives to the hands of a few, but in reality the gifts are for everyone. Why do we not perceive this? Will it be possible to restructure our way of thinking and our education to give love its rightful place? What will be the strategy to follow so that, if what we propose is true, people can realize the essential need to enhance the manifestation of love? Intelligence separates me from you, it arises by comparison, I am more or less intelligent than you. Love, on the other hand, unites me to you: I cannot love you without you, and moreover, I can only love thanks to the fact that you exist, it is you that makes it possible for me to love. How wonderful that others exist so that I can love!” (Excerpt from the book "Biodanza, the Poetry of the Encounter", Ed. Lúmen, 2008, p. 63-64).
What in Rolando Toro's original texts was of a complex subjective constitution, determined by social interaction and various forms of socialization, now becomes the result of what nature "gives us". Toro himself had pointed out that his original ideas had been stimulated by "despair and anguish" in face of certain forms of social organization, by "wars, capitalist exploitation and poverty", that is, by a deep unease caused by the reality of dispossession and suffering of the large majority. The idea now is that injustice, success, accumulation is just a result of "nature". Also, it is not something to complain about, as it is “a gift for everyone”. The dispossessed and the disenfranchised, therefore, should not utter any questions either, but rather learn to enjoy inequality. The notions of "love" and "affectivity" that we read in Toro's texts are driven by the need to modify these "civilizational frameworks", to overcome what
"society has done to the body of the worker", to overcome the frameworks in which we live because they do not allow us to share and enjoy the fruits of paradise among all, paradise that is not in the hereafter but in the centre of life itself.
Now, instead, love is utilitarian: "you enable me to love you", "you are what makes it possible for me to love", "others exists so that I am able to love". Loving is a consumption, a favour from the other that allows us beyond what one has already received “from nature”. For those who concentrate the profits it does not matter that the “natural” distribution is unfair and unequal. Luckily, in addition to enjoying their "gifts", they can appreciate love because less fortunate "others" exist.
The privatist mindset of the IBF model is another reason for the dissociation between Biodanza (and its facilitators) and the public sphere, social action and political concerns, theory and practice. This distance was concretized through two basic actions, namely:
1) The teacher training removed almost all forms of aptitude or knowledge assessment (especially for entry into the schools). In November 1989, just a few years before the creation of the IBF, Rolando Toro had said in the Petrópolis Declaration:
“In order to obtain the title of Biodanza facilitator, the students must effectively meet all the requirements of the teaching regulations. Admission to teaching training schools will be made through evaluative exams that will consider human, intellectual and emotional conditions. The theses will be oriented to scientific research and systemic thinking, avoiding pseudoscientific or dissociative tendencies.”
Today, anyone who pays their monthly fee enters a Biodanza school. Nothing else matters. There are no instruments in the pedagogical programs for reviewing and verifying the knowledge acquired during the modules taken. Commonly, there are no instances of evaluation or analysis of professional aptitude either, except for a short final monograph, commonly on a free subject chosen at the student's discretion - the vast majority based on esoteric or pseudo-scientific notions. In any case, most of the pedagogical processes are left to the directors of each school, who must prioritize the annual payment to the IBF for the use of the brand. Training is thus continually subject to financial concerns, making the director’s role a task closer to business administration than to pedagogy. The concern about the quality of training and the professional aptitude of those who graduate is completely secondary: those who have more students are the ones who make the most money and who are considered the most successful. That is the IBF’s organizational logic.
2) Training dispensed with social work as a requirement to carry out teaching practices, which were previously carried out in social institutions, with people associated to them: “Participation in social work, in the fight against poverty, will be part of the teacher training” (RT). Consequently, Biodanza was dissociated from public institutions, especially health and education, spaces where its application, in addition to being urgent, would obtain concrete results (both for students and patients, as well as for medical and educational personnel) and greater possibilities of professional insertion.
The main objective of both decisions was to consolidate a greater concentration of people within private schools, because it is there that the greatest economic benefit is obtained. As schools become individually managed settings, paying an annual fee to the IBF (that is, a "franchise" regulated by an international trademark, owned by a multinational company), the directors find themselves forced, by the structural logic, to account for their students as "clients". Without necessarily being the personal intention of the facilitators or didactic teachers - who are often unable to make active decisions, due to the verticality of the institution and its corporate pressures - biodanza has been strongly privatized (private groups, private schools, private conferences) and commanded by an administrative management concentrated on (money) collection.
The most evident effect of this process is that the activity is only practiced by the socioeconomic sector that can afford the payment of a regular fee (after having covered the rest of their basic needs). In countries like Argentina, Biodanza is a luxury asset, largely disconnected from the popular sectors. The second evident effect of this type of elitism is the transformation of congresses (by definition, spaces for theoretical exposition, discussion and exchange of information and knowledge) into onerous, class-oriented and exclusive international events, held in VIP resorts under advertisements and premises worthy of the Club Med, in which lobby activities and the presentation of new products (also called “extensions”) prevail, which are then incorporated into the Biodanza market as offers through the different groups and schools.
Another product put on sale by the IBF — in addition to the music catalogues, which for many years were sold in industrial quantities by school directors, without ever paying royalties to the artists — was the so-called “Didactic Training”.
It is worth remembering here, to understand why we categorized it as a “product”, that in ALAB's time, the didactic facilitators were appointed by Rolando Toro Araneda and the presidency of the Association, who had to consider the following aspects after a long process of evaluation of the candidate:
A) Being a certified facilitator with at least two years of regular experience in coordinating groups
B) Sound theoretical knowledge of Biodanza and complete command of at least one area of specialization (social sciences, pedagogy, psychology, medicine, etc.).
C) Emotional and affective consistency.
D) Ethical, personal and professional coherence.
After the creation of the IBF, these criteria were replaced by two weekends, in which it is enough to pay its abusive cost in US $ (always complicated and excluding in Latin American economies) to leave transformed, almost by magic, into a didactic teacher qualified to give any of the 20+ modules that make up the teacher training program, without experience, specific knowledge, psychological and affective consistency being evaluated or considered, or the ethical background of the participants. As usual in private education, in Biodanza the training is literally bought.
Therefore, since the schools stopped being community experiences with the creation of the IBF and became individual private ventures, mass production of didactic teachers guarantees new revenue for the company that grants permission for the creation of school franchises (IBF or similar), since any didactic teachers that gathers a minimum group of people can request the opening of their own school paying the corresponding annual fee.
Finally, Biodanza officially distanced itself totally from the academic field. In over twenty years there have been no truly deep and consistent revisions or theoretical updates to its conceptual framework or methodology. Institutional spaces for free exchange, discussion and conceptual criticism have not been permitted, and all notions of a collegiate body have been dismantled. There are also no academic publications.
Although the IBF has amassed fortunes for more than two decades, no research was funded and no books with new theoretical developments were published (the few books published under the name Biodanza are nothing more than rehash of Toro's theory under different words, and were edited personally by their authors). Today, for any university setting, Biodanza theory is completely outdated and many of its main notions (among others, the so-called "theory" of instincts) do not withstand serious theoretical analysis. A clear example of the harmful effects of this inbred circuit can be found in the doctoral research carried out in Argentina and Germany by Stuck and Villegas on Biodanza (2008) [1]: the Leipzig academic juries validated the results regarding the psychophysiological effects of Biodanza, but they harshly criticized the theoretical premises that support it. These problems, which seriously hinder its insertion in university settings and in public health and education spaces, are caused by blocking the organized development of a theoretical critique of Toro's original model. However, Biodanza continues to operate under the illusion that the activity has "scientific foundations": those of a science that does not discuss, does not investigate, does not critique, does not publish, does not contrast, and therefore does not produce knowledge.
In short: in social and institutional systems, nothing is the product of chance. The Biodanza movement was not the victim of a tragedy. The process that led to this current conception is part of a political program of appropriation that is over twenty years old. Its objective was to create an elitist and private institutional order whose paradigm is profit, controlled by a vertical and proprietary structure, completely oblivious to consultations, participation and collective decisions.
From the mid-1990s on, shortly after finishing everything democratically built by ALAB, that model was consolidated in the IBF, although it will obviously be able to assume any other name in the future. As long as Biodanza continues to be reduced to a registered trademark with objectives of accumulation of wealth and business expansion, and the general activity is organized under corporate pressure and proprietary extortion, within a classist and excluding model, that model will remain unchanged, no matter what name it bears nor who promotes it.
We believe that we are going through a historical moment, in which Biodanza practitioners and professionals need to assume where we stand with respect to the biocentric principle, in all that it implies as ethical positioning and as emancipatory praxis based on love, respect, equality and solidarity.
From that perspective, Biodanza can only be organized collectively, horizontally, autonomously and democratically, favouring cooperative and self-managing practices, accepting the free exchange of ideas that promotes scientific knowledge and focusing on social transformation, justice and equal opportunities and human rights. For now, we don't have any of that. We need to recover a historical perspective so as not to naturalize a situation that, at some point, was different. If it was different before, it may be different now. The answer is in us.
"Neither in gods, kings or tribunes is the supreme savior,
let us make the redemptive effort ourselves” (Eugène Pottier)
Carlos Pagés and Natalio Pagés, facilitators of Biodanza.
PS: This text is a brief historical-political analysis of the Biodanza movement. We do not mention names of living people because we are not interested in pointing out personal responsibilities - although there are - but in showing how the events that led us to this present situation occurred and what are some of the instruments that guarantee its reproduction. There are exceptions in any institutional organization. Unfortunately they are not the ones driving the movement. For this reason it is essential to analyze the regularities and not the qualifications.
This is not an exhaustive analysis. Although there are many other important difficulties (sexism; personal defamation; blacklists that prevent facilitators from carrying out their work in “occupied” areas or teaching in schools for refusing to lobby or being affectively and ideologically emancipated; turning a blind eye in schools with abusive people or situations of abuse; etc.) we choose not to delve into them to focus on specifically institutional aspects.
We decided to write it because we believe that memory and truth are fundamental aspects for any type of community organization that tries to be fair and biocentric. Also because we believe that Biodanza participants and facilitators need to step forward in personal and professional maturity, emancipate ourselves from the movement's parental figures and dare to meet, reflect and dialogue on issues (those discussed here and many others) that historically have been swept under the rug through fallacies, distorted accounts, emotional extortion, and corporate pressure. Like it or not, the Biodanza "family" is dysfunctional. We believe that assuming that reality is fundamental to be able to build a different future for us.
We love Biodanza and nothing written by us here is related to it as an integrative practice or method, but only with its institutional configuration. All critical elaborations are argued, but as with any critical text, you can agree with them or not. The facts that are commented, however, are documented, so they do not allow controversies. We welcome all kinds of comments, except defamation, ad hominem or disqualifications. Those types of messages will go directly to the trash. We are in favour of freedom of expression, not of insults.
Biocentric greetings.
[1] Marcus Stuck, Alejandra Villegas, Dance towards health? Empirical investigations of Biodanza, Schibri-Verlag, Germany, 2008.