The meanings of extracurricular activities for ballarinian children

Abstract This study investigated the daily life of middle-class children in Salvador, Bahia. The research was developed at a ballet school with girls between six and seven years. The collection of data was done by an unstructured observation of ethnographic and exploratory character in ballet school and interviews with five children. The results point to the ambivalent meanings that circumscribe the ballet between the dimensions of the discipline and the playfulness, as well as the status of hyperactivity, which constitutes a point that unites the children of the present study and makes us reflect on the representations of childhood today. As more and more institutions specialized in offering activities for children appear, the results indicate that the environments in which extracurricular activities are developed are still scarcely explored in Brazil; and also discuss the need to investigate this childhood, which is invisible because it is considered normative.