Jessica Behm dances to the rhythms of ethnozoology

The Center for Theatre Arts is the sunny day background for Jessica Behm. Robert Barker/University Photography

By Franklin Crawford

Graduating senior Jessica Behm goes by a rather fetching moniker: "the dancing zoologist." It's an apt description for her multidisciplinary relationship between science and art.

Behm arrived at Cornell from the University of Minnesota where she accumulated three full years of science, primarily in zoology. Here, as a College Scholar, she developed a research program that combined elements of Brazilian dance and principles of ethnozoology. Ethnozoology, a derivative of ethnobiology, is a study of the interrelationships of culture, zoology, biology and botany.

"I was interested in studying the way in which cultures represent animals and biological information in their dance forms," Behm said. "Western dance, particularly that as performed in the United States, is often physically and ideologically removed from the natural world. Yet in many cultures, including some of those in Amazonia, dance acts as a physical dialogue with and about the ecology of the environment.

"As a dancer," she said, "I have attempted to understand how dance is relevant as an academic discourse. In part, this comes from identifying its role in biological conservation."

While Behm wrapped up her Cornell career with a multimedia presentation that included dance accompanied by music on Amazonian instruments and a slide presentation, her long range plans involve law school and international relations. She first traveled to Brazil through a Cornell Abroad program and participated in an internship with a Brazilian non-governmental organization (NGO) that works in urban areas of the Northeastern coastal city of Fortaleza. In particular, the NGO uses dance and art with street children as a way to restore a personal and cultural sense of empowerment. The project also utilizes capoeira, an increasingly popular and challenging gymnastic blend of Brazilian martial arts, music and dance, which incorporates elements of Afro-Brazilian religions.

Behm returned to Brazil where she worked at the Museo Emilio Goeldi, a zoobotanical park, in the northern city of Belém (Pará). She lived within a community there and studied the relation of their ritual dance forms and biological representations of the environment.

"Globally, many 'traditional' indigenous dance and performance forms include gestures that physically mimic animals, express culturally relevant information about agricultural seasons, astronomy, or detail the relationship between organisms and ecological principles," Behm said.

But Behm wasn't just in Brazil as a dancer or biologist. She is keenly aware of the complex and pervasive environmental problems in Brazil. After graduation, she plans to dance in New York City and work with an international development agency focused on environmental and indigenous rights issues in South America.

"Lamentations regarding the uniqueness of the rain forest ecosystem, though oft sung, cannot be ignored," she said. "Western biologists, ecologists and anthropologists are attempting to work in coordination with local communities and scientists to preserve Brazil's cultural and biological diversity. Yet in Brazil, in particular, much of this fundamental change must be evoked though the legal system."

Perhaps some day, this dancing zoologist will make an unprecedented case for rain forest preservation in an international court of appeals.