Choreographic Equilibrium

Equilibrium is an emerging phenomenon.

Choreographies, the process of creating them, but also their singular renditions, are the happening of and the  visualisation of that ongoing movement towards and out of equilibrium.

The work then, is about trying to asses at any given moment the directional quality of the choreographic event, as in - is it moving towards equilibrium, or away from it.

The emergent nature of the equilibrium phenomenon, is the reason why central planning and control of whatever outcome, are by essence, anti-choreography.

Free speech and Private property through the choreographic lens

Free speech and the notion of private property, as fundamental, natural, human rights, have emerged throughout the evolution of western civilization thinking as the bedrocks of freedom and individual sovereignty.

Whenever societies have come to respect and protect these two by law, they have seen unprecedented flourishing, innovation and progress.

Free speech, or the right to free expression, involves the right to exercise one’s ideas and identity without infringement and is intrinsically tied to the notion of property rights. The two go hand in hand and whenever one of those is limited, controlled or banned, the other cannot be sustained.

The practice of using dancers as “empty vessels” who execute a choreographers’ vision, can be seen as a form of creative censorship, an infringement upon their personal “property” suppressing their creative capital and undermining their freedom of expression, resulting in curbing personal initiative, stifling both creative capital and free speech, while transforming dancers into tools rather than sovereign contributors.

Much as private property rights fosters political, social and economic freedoms, dancers’ creative autonomy, enhances artistic freedom and nurtures authentic expression.

The choreographic process should be approached as a dynamic exchange, a marketplace of creative ideas, enriched by the interplay of voices. Instead of a top-down imposition; it can become an open-ended dialogue, an expressive, adaptive and human-centered process.

A choreographer’s willingness to allow dancers to retain their “property” and free speech within the process, promotes a more authentic, living choreography, rooted in respect for individual creativity as an essential form of personal property.

For that to happen, makers need to look upon the choreographic medium, not as a finite product aimed at harnessing the creative process as a vehicle for telling specific stories (their own or others), promoting agendas, expressing specific messages or enslaving it to esthetic ideals, but rather, as an organic, free market like system, which optimizes the quality of the exchanges it enables, while remaining inherently indifferent to their content.

In that sense, equality of outcome and freedom, are mutually exclusive.

Whenever dancers in a specific work all seem to follow a similar external authority, be it in their vocabulary, movement style, performative strategies, or even the manner in which they approach decision making, it is always the result of censorship on both their artistic property and free speech.

Great art is always about nothing in particular, which is what allows it to be of and about everyone and everything. But for this to exist within a choreographic context, the notions of private property and free speech must be embedded deeply into the fabric of the choreographic process.

“The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.”

Friedrich August von Hayek

Engineering

Choreography is, or at least it should be, engineered truth.

Price Discovery and Stock-to-Flow Ratio: Looking at the Question of Artistic Value, Through Economic Analogies

In both economics and the art world, the process of determining value isn’t based on objective, constant, universal units of measurement, which renders the analogy between the two fields surprisingly instructive.

Unlike other fields of human endeavor, where the units of measurement used are grounded in natural laws (weight, length, pressure, temperature etc), the value of art is inherently subjective and fluid. Quality and value in these other fields, are tied to measurement units which are objective, constant and therefore produce objectively  measurable and predictable results. In both art and economics, value is determined through complex, human-driven interactions and processes, but in both fields, the ideal of a truly “free market”—where value, is discovered through unregulated interactions—is often disrupted by intermediaries and authorities whose decisions shape and sometimes distort organic dynamics.

The growing confusion in the art world regarding the notions of quality and value, has grown so big, it seems almost as if that is the natural state of things.

This essay uses two key economic concepts: ‘price discovery’ and ‘stock-to-flow ratio’, to try and understand how we have arrived at a place where poor art can be considered to have value, and vice-versa. Exploring these parallels might offer an insight into how external forces, which have distorted the otherwise organic, self-correcting and self-regulating mechanisms of value emergence, have resulted in an oversaturated and confused art world.

In economics, price discovery refers to the process by which the market determines the price of a good or service through the interaction of buyers and sellers. Prices reflect a mixture of tangible factors like scarcity and demand, as well as intangible ones such as perceived utility, originality or prestige. This process is often seen as the product of a free market where value is revealed through organic competition, interaction and negotiation.

In art, a parallel process exists for determining artistic value, through a complex web of interactions between artists, critics, curators, and the public. However, much like with governments and central banks’ role as regulators, the art world is often subject to the tastes, agendas and judgments of curators, critics, bureaucrats and art institutions, who act as gatekeepers or regulators of sorts, significantly influencing what is considered valuable. Over time, this value, which is anything but static and is continuously renegotiated and reinterpreted by the actors involved, gets increasingly distorted, becoming a reflection of institutional and political priorities.

In both art and economics, gatekeepers and intermediaries play a crucial role in value determination. In economics, central banks, regulators, and governments’ interventions disrupt natural price discovery by manipulating interest rates, setting prices control, introducing subsidies or inflating currency’s supply through quantitative easing. These actions impact assets’ values artificially, leading to bubbles, market inefficiencies and even economic crises. Similarly, in the art world, curators, critics, and government cultural agencies, disrupt the organic emergence of artistic value. By deciding which artists receive funding, which works are exhibited, or which genres are promoted, these actors influence the perception of what is deemed “important” or “worthy of attention,” while crafting narratives around its cultural, social, or political significance and more often than not, dictating the terms by which an artwork is judged.

The rise of cultural bureaucracies that provide subsidies to certain types of art and certain groups of artists, further distorts this landscape, creating a system where value is often imposed from the top down rather than emerging from public demand or organic market and social dynamics.

Rather than allowing value to emerge organically, these gatekeepers impose their own esthetic or intellectual preferences, elevating certain artists while marginalizing others. A feedback loop is created where the value of a work is no longer tied to its intrinsic qualities or popular appeal but is instead determined by its alignment with institutional trends or theories, promoted by the art establishment.

Both in the art world and in economics, the interventions of gatekeepers often lead to the creation of artificial markets. In the art world, government agencies and cultural bureaucrats play a crucial role in deciding which artistic endeavors can thrive and which remain underfunded or ignored. Bureaucrats often prioritise certain artistic genres or political messages, skewing the artistic landscape, creating a disconnect between the broader public and the art that is being promoted or exhibited. Art that resonates with certain communities may be overlooked or underfunded because it doesn’t align with the narratives or criteria of gatekeepers, while artists who adapt to these criteria may thrive as a result of blatant favoritism even if their work is of low quality, or lacks widespread cultural relevance. Artists, in turn, tailor their work to fit the criteria of funding institutions, resulting in the loss of originality as a fundamental artistic component, the overrepresentation of specific types of art and the marginalisation of others.

This process is analogous to the economic world, where regulators and governments create distortions by intervening in the free market. For instance, subsidies to specific industries or fiscal policies designed to protect particular sectors can result in market inefficiencies and the artificial inflation of certain sectors. Just as an inflated value for an artwork might not reflect its cultural significance, artificially propped-up industries may not reflect true market value. Both in art and economics, top-down intervention leads to misallocation of resources and a disconnection from organic value creation.

The parallel between price discovery in economics and value emergence in the art world reveals a shared vulnerability to distortion by intermediaries. Whether it’s regulators and central banks shaping the economy, or  bureaucrats, curators and critics defining the art world’s taste, external interventions frequently skew the free flow of artistic capital and the organic processes of value creation. In both spheres, value is not merely a product of market demand or public appreciation but is subject to the decisions of those in power. While it is tempting to assume that value should emerge organically, the reality is that gatekeepers—whether in the form of curators or economic regulators—play a powerful role in shaping how value is perceived and distributed.

This process is described and examined in detail, in the Austrian School of economics’ critique of centralized intervention in markets. Thinkers like Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard argue that government manipulation of markets disrupts the natural order of supply and demand, diverting the process of value discovery away from what is truly meritorious or desired by the public.

To deepen this analogy, another concept from the world of economics worth looking at is the stock-to-flow ratio, which is an economic metric used to measure the scarcity of a commodity. Stock refers to the existing supply, while flow refers to the new supply entering the market. Commodities with a high stock-to-flow ratio (like gold) are seen as more valuable because their existing supply is stable and difficult to inflate. In contrast, commodities with low ratios (like wheat or oil) are more subject to fluctuations in value because they are more easily produced.

In the art world, one can draw a similar comparison. Historically, art was created by a relatively small number of highly skilled individuals, and the demand for their work was relatively high, giving art a high stock-to-flow ratio. The number of artists producing work (the “flow”) was relatively low, so the “stock” of great art remained scarce. This scarcity conferred value upon individual artists and their works, allowing them to hold significant cultural, political, economic, and social importance. However, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the modern state, mainly through the industrialization of art schools and academies, the number of artists and artworks has grown exponentially. Art education became more accessible, and art production exploded, lowering the stock-to-flow ratio of art. While this democratization of artistic creation might seem like a positive development, it has also led to an oversaturation of the art market. As more and more artists emerge and more works (the majority of which is bound to be mediocre) flood the market, the intrinsic quality and value of art, as a unique cultural product, have both diminished.

This parallels the argument in Austrian economics, that artificially expanding the supply of a commodity—whether through government printing of money or overproduction—devalues it. In the same way that expanding the money supply through central banking leads to inflation, expanding the number of artists and artworks has diluted the significance of individual contributions, creating a cultural inflation of sorts, followed by an inevitable decline in artistic quality.

As both Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek observed, markets are driven by human action and subjective values, meaning that both economics and the arts are fundamentally tied to the human element. The dynamics of value in both spheres are determined not by inherent worth alone, but by perception, scarcity, and the interaction of social forces. When external entities—be they central banks or cultural institutions—intervene, the organic discovery of value becomes distorted.

The parallels between the overproduction of art and the overproduction of money help explain why we find ourselves in an era where it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between “good” and “bad” art. Just as monetary inflation erodes the purchasing power of money, the cultural inflation of art and artists, has eroded our ability to recognise artistic excellence. Where once great artists were able to command attention and resources due to their unique contributions to society, today’s artists operate in an oversaturated market where value is increasingly dictated by trends, funding priorities, and institutional gatekeeping. The more art that is produced, the harder it becomes for any individual work to stand out, diluting the overall cultural value of art in society.

The economic concepts of price discovery and the stock-to-flow ratio provide a powerful analogy for understanding the decline of artistic value in modern societies. Similarly to how centralised intervention disrupts price discovery; the regulators and gate keepers of the art world, tamper with the organic process of artistic value emergence, and just as government’s intervention and manipulation of money and the markets in economics can lead to inflation and devaluation; the explosion of art production in the modern era has diluted the intrinsic worth of both art and artists, and as a result, we live in a time where artistic value tends to be artificially imposed rather than emerging organically.

Rather than allowing for a free, decentralized market of artistic ideas and propositions, to naturally offer individual artists the reward for their work as valued by the others they serve, the current system determines value, and therefore reward, in a manner which is highly dependent on political obedience and connections. In a reality where the majority of art and artists are unable to generate real artistic value, the reward cannot be based on art itself, and so it is bound to be based on obedience and politics.

Looking at the art world through the lens of economics, its different schools of thought and its real world manifestations, provides some valuable insights and might help understand certain dynamics that otherwise, might seem as if they’re simply how things are, where as in reality, they are a direct consequence of a specific system and its operating code.  One can argue that what has happened to art in the past hundred years or so, is the same thing that happened to every other aspect of human societies in that time period, as a result of the emergence of the Fiat standard as a monetary technology, and how it has changed every aspect of modern life. What we find ourselves with today, is Fiat art, just like we have Fiat education systems, Fiat Health systems, Fiat Food, Fiat politics, Fiat science, Fiat wars and so on.

The challenge then, is to recognize these distortions and seek a shift to a more authentic system for governing the art world, where scarcity, excellence, merit, and public appreciation play a larger role in balancing these influences, in order to allow for a more authentic representation of value.

Trying to imagine what type of art and artists would emerge in a less regulated and centrally controlled environment, is as exciting as it is depressing in view of the current state of things. But it is essential, even as a thought experiment, to try and envision a future where art and artists are evolving outside the gridlock created by the bureaucratic and political apparatus of the art world.

What is Waht

Movement material to choreography, is what sound frequencies are to music.

Raw, neutral, meaningless, random, indifferent information until it is assembled and organized through an artistic process.

That’s why any movement is as good as any other movement, in the same way any sound frequency is as good as the next one.

The bare minimum

It’s hard to take seriously the opinion of anyone who watched a contemporary choreographic work just one time. Especially if that one time was the premiere. Unfortunately, that is the case for almost everyone whose opinion will have the most impact on the work’s public perception and stage life.

There’s an inherent process happening over time of studying a specific work, which serves as a gateway into actually ‘seeing’ it. Choreography, like music, grows on the viewer overtime through repeated viewings, especially when it involves new forms, new ideas or new ways of doing the choreographic thing. It takes time to ‘get’ a choreographic work, it involves a process of expanding one’s perception in new ways in order to be able to access a deeper, fuller form of experience. On top of that, being that choreographies are living entities (if treated in that manner of course), they tend to change and evolve over their ‘life time’, especially in the earlier phases, going through a process of revealing potentials, adjusting and fine tuning their timeline and getting rid of superfluous content, which was necessary for the creation process, but becomes irrelevant over time for the work as a whole - a thing that requiers time to be correctly identified and carried out.

The existing format in the performing arts, doesn’t allow for this. By default, choreographic works are watched one time, which implies a huge gap between the potential they hold and the way in which they are perceived.

If one wishes the ‘see’ a choreographic work, one needs to experience it multiple times over a long period, in different venues and with different groups of public. Anything less than this, is remaining on the surface.

That being said, the absolute majority of works being presented nowadays, don’t deserve even that one viewing. The reason why they make it to stage in the first place, is probably linked to the ‘one time’ format, as they are made with the intention to ‘work’ instantly in order to secure an immediate reaction from the viewer, but would have no chance to sustain multiple views. The ‘single time’ default format of the art form and the low level of readership it engenders, is what allows for shallow, superficial, simplistic and poorly made works to find their way into existence, receive legitimacy and sometimes, even raving reviews and across the board acceptance. This phenomena is very much the result of ‘things taking the shape of their container’, where the way in which a system is defined and configured, has a massive impact on the nature, behavior and perception of the things which grow within it.

Another side effect of the current model for presenting and sharing live choreographic works, has to do with the fragmented perception of the entire oeuvre of specific choreographers. It is almost impossible to find anyone, besides the artists themselves, who actually experienced live the entirety of the works made by a specific choreographer, especially if they have been creating work over a long period of time.

Imagine trying to form an opinion about Picasso based on just a few of his paintings, detached from his entire ouvre stretching over decades and navigating between radically different periods, styles, mediums, techniques and influences. Or Bach, after listening one time to only three or four of his pieces out of the thousands he has written, or again, Shakespeare, after reading only Hamlet. One time. That would be inconceivable. Taking one, or even a few works out of the context of an artist’s oeuvre that was created over decades, and trying to understand them outside of the complexity of an artist’s entire creative process, is like trying to describe an elephant with your eyes close, while touching the tip of the trunk (given that you have a notion of what an animal is, but never actually saw an elephant and don’t even know they exist).

The separate works of every long term artist, are all parts of the same process. They form a singular whole that is larger than the sum of its parts. It’s almost impossible to fully grasp a specific artist’s work outside of that whole. Here again, the format makes it almost impossible to generate a comprehensive view of a choreographer’s work in its entirety, and then, out of this radically limited point of view, to try and form a meaningful opinion regarding an isolated work.

Unlike the other art forms which leave behind them objects that can be easily accessed and studied, the choreographic art form is bound to its primordial link to the present time and its limited live renditions, restricting the access to it and limiting the opportunities to engage with it and as a consequence, study it in a profound manner.

Time though, on a very long-term scale, has a tendency to correct these distortions, resulting in massive changes in how certain works were perceived at the time when they were made, as opposed to a radically different discourse around them (or a straightforward non existing one) once some time has passed. Too little too late most of the time, but still…

There’s a need to reconsider and propose alternatives to the existing format of presenting contemporary choreography. To come up with a new model which allows for, and incentivizes multiple viewings of works, as a way to evolve and deepen the readership into choreographic works, individual artists, and the choreographic art form as a whole.

The Container

Choreography is a container.

People, both individuals and groups, end up taking the shape of the container they’re evolving within.

Look at the dancers, look at their actions, look at their faces, observe the energy they emit, the intentions driving their action, the ways in which they interact, and you’ll know everything there is to know about the container they are in.

Order

Choreography is evolved order, rather than designed order.

In nature, order is an emergent phenomenon, it is not intentionally designed. That which is designed intentionally by humans, isn’t order in its deep sense, but more of an instrument, a tool, serving a specific function. If one looks at choreography as a way to understand the nature of things, being that its subject matter are humans and that humans are part of nature, one should concentrate on creating the conditions which allow for order (autonomous, uncontrolled and not in the service of a specific thing or goal) to emerge.

One should focus on creating the circumstances where dancers are incentivized and predisposed to engage in interaction and as a result, arrange the action.

The fatal conceit at the root of approaching choreography as designed order, is the overestimation of individual human intelligence, and the belief that choreography can be engineered through deliberate, rational, central planning, when in fact, much of what makes choreography function, is the result of spontaneous, evolutionary like processes.

Choreography is an equation with infinite variables, hence, choreographic order can only be revealed over time and through gradual trial and error.

Choreography emerges when dancers are left to do their thing and find their way, within the frame of an evolving, yet clear and stable rules set.

What a choreographic system needs to strive to achieve then, is the creation of a fair and ethical set of rules that allow for individual autonomy and the chance to discover what might be its best manifestation each time it takes place.

The choreographic future cannot be designed, it has to be discovered, and the choreographer’s job is to create conditions that maximize the possibility for the discovery of infinite optimal futures.

Choreography shouldn't be thought of in terms of outcomes, as in, designed order, but rather, it should be thought of in terms of processes and evolved, emergent order.

Football, not theater

The game of football, is probably one of the most popular set of rules ever invented by humans. Its adoption in the free marketplace of human ideas and practices, is unprecedented. There isn’t a place on the planet, where a massive amount of people of all ages and backgrounds, isn’t either playing it, watching it, or invested in it in different manners: professionally, as amateurs, fans, through media coverage, business related activities etc.

The quality of the idea at the base of the game of football, is undeniable. The numbers are staggering and serve as a proof.

That being said, not all football matches are the same. The range of volatility related to the outcome and objective quality of specific football matchs, is extremely high, as can be observed with how specific matches became historical landmarks, cited, analyzed and referred to decades after their happening, while others, can be so insignificant that they are forgotten the second they end. But also, football matches can be interesting, dramatic, and produce value in completely different ways and for totally different reasons, which is what makes football such a compelling thing in the first place.

The undeniable quality and value of the concept itself of the game of football, is totally separate from all the possible outcomes of each specific football match. In fact, this range of infinite possible outcomes, is built into the underlying DNA of the game. It is fundamental to what makes it exiting and appealing to begin with.

Football is of course just one example of a human made rules based system, among many others. Chess, poker, the English language, the stocks exchange, the roads grid with its rules for driving etc, all these, are systems based on sets of rules, who were developed and adopted over time and through emerging consensus, by enough people in order to become identifiable and accepted spaces for different types of human interaction. They all share that one predominant trait, of being a space which generates potentials for action, always in relations to how people will engage with them each and every time they choose to do so.

Choreographies, or more accurately, a certain type of choreographic works (the one which is rules based and therefore not made as a reproducible object, but more as a space where a living thing can take place), are pretty much the same.

A choreographic work, can generate totally different outcomes in terms of atmosphere, content, emergent narratives etc. There should be an inherent volatility in play, regarding each specific performance of the same work. This volatility, or variability, isn’t a bug, but rather, it is a feature of organically living systems, which are volatile by nature. Trying to fix and control their outcome, literally kills them.

And so when asked what is the work about? The accurate answer would be, well, I have no idea, we have to wait and see.

The only thing pre determined when it comes to choreography the way I see it, is the HOW. The WHAT, the WHY, the ABOUT, are all elements which emerge from the thing as it is happening. Asking what a choreographic work is about, is like asking ‘what is the score?’, before a football match started. Trying to define what a living thing is, restricts its ability to evolve into becoming all possible things.

One of the deepest misunderstandings regarding choreography as a unique art form, comes from its historical submission to theater. Many aspects of how choreography is understood and practiced, come from different forms of imitation and adoption of practices related to classical theater. When one goes to watch a new production of Romeo and Juliette, one knows before even entering the theater, how the story will unfold. the entire goal of yet another rendition of this play, is related to the means of the dramaturgical representation, rather than the actual content. The focus of traditional theater, is on how to tell an existing story in a new and original manner, as the story itself, its purpose, the underlying ideas etc, are already clearly defined.

Dance, and consequently choreography, has traditionally fallen into the trap of thinking along pretty much the same lines, while largely ignoring the fact that the choreographic mechanisms of content creation, are nothing remotely resembling those of theater. In that sense, choreography resembles much more a football match, than it does a theater play being performed. This deviation from what choreography is, can’t be more visible then in your typical program notes, literally telling the spectator what they are about to see, what the work is about and what they should be ‘getting’ from watching it. All this, before the dancers even entered the stage, which is as ridiculous as a program describing an about to happen football match.

Hence the problem with the question, ‘what is it about?’.

Understanding this, can be fundamentally liberating for makers, and as a result, can spare the field from having to deal with an endless amount of works, who are clearly about something, but are inherently nothing in choreographic terms. Works who are variations on theater making, much more than they are choreographically driven and thus, dilute the notion itself of the choreographic art form.

One way of doing this, would be to stop using the question ‘what is it about?’, and replace it with ‘how are you working?’. ‘What does your process look like?’ and so on.

A choreographic work, when used as a tool to present an external idea, tell an existing story, illustrate a concept, push an agenda and so on, has the same value a football match with a predetermined score does. Non whatsoever.

It negates the actual nature of the choreographic game as a singular manifestation of real time occurrences, bottom-top emergence rather than top- bottom organization and a generator of outcomes, which can be widely different each and every time it is taking place.

The way in which we grow to KNOW things, is over time. We know what the game of football is, because we got to experience millions, if not billions, of different football matches each with their unique unfolding and outcome. In the same way, we get to KNOW a choreographic piece over time, because it was allowed to unfold and become a multitude of different things each time it happened.

Choreographies, like football matches, are a thing waiting to happen.

The Space/Time paradigm shift

Whenever asked how I understand what choreography making is, I usually answer - oh well, it’s simply the process of organising movement, or action, through time and space. I have in recent years though, gradually started to notice this claim is not entierly accurate in describing what I’ve been observing, when looking at the choreographic thing.

The given at the heart of this claim, was that both time and space are set, fixed, unchanging, pre existing, objective fundamentals, separate from and external to the action taking place, which I then relate to when trying to come up with logics and systems of organisation of matter (human movement and action) on top and within those two layers.

What was until recently a solid perception of the choreographic reality I am functioning within, started to dissolve recently with the creeping feeling that the more I observe the relations between time, space and movement, the more I start leaning towards the idea that time and space are not these fixed, neutral, pre existing and unchanging dimensions, but rather, they are the result, or at least heavily influenced, by some other structural dynamics taking place. As in, something in the way in which a thing is choreographed and carried out, actually generates specific time and space fields or at least, some parallel variations of them. Meaning, the time and space aspects of choreography, are not a given, but rather fundamentally probabilistic. Which then might imply, that choreography is a set of vectors like occurrences, which continuously redefine the properties of both time and space.

Each choreography happening then, generates its own emergent time and space properties, but more than that, since choreography is only happening when and where it does, being fundamentally a living thing, the same choreography, happening in a different moment, different place and in front of a different audience, will generate totally different time and space outcomes each time it is happening.

Looking at what the choreographic process keeps doing continuously, it is obvious that fundamentally, it is about producing complicated and interesting objects, structures, kinetic entities and so on, which then assemble through different modes and patterns of interaction, into complex systems. It’s a never ending and complex pathway of construction, that leads to increasing and irreducible complexity that then induce those objects with novel, emergent capabilities. Since nothing just jumps into existence, meaning things need to go through an assembly pathway of structuring, these objects and systems contain all of the information related to the steps it took for a thing to get to its current stage. Choreography, IS the embodiment of all the information related to the time it took to go through all the steps who led to its current manifestation.

What these different stages, processes and procedures are made of, are series of constraints. Specific patterns of constraints, require receptivity at the base layer of the choreographic reality by the dancers who experience them. There has to be an acknowledgment (understanding?) of these constraints, in order for the reality of the choreographic thing to manifest. Another word for this act of acknowledging, would be consciousness. This causation phenomenon, as in, a constant layering of constraints which then generates receptivity in the form of an accumulation of consciousness layers, is what allows the choreographic thing to exist.

Another way of saying this, would be that the extrinsic nature of choreography are constraints, while its Intrinsic nature, is consciousness. Both go hand in hand - the first, is what leads to the second.

Consciousness is the root structure of reality, therefore, it is probable that it will propagate into other proxy like structures. Choreography, being that it is man made, a deliberately engineered system, is induced with the consciousnesses of its choreographer and those of the dancers involved in its making and happening (and to a some degree, that of the audience present). It is somehow the sum, a meeting point, a grid, or a sort of a platform, for the multitude of consciousness at play and as a result, it will then generate its own specific consciousness field through a synergic process.

Just like with AI training, where machines are fed huge amounts of networked information in a learning like process, Choreographic intelligence is generated through continuous repetition and study of choreographic situations by the dancers. What emerges after some time, is a sort of autonomous intelligence of the choreographic thing itself, which is separate from the individual intelligences of the separate dancers, and at some point, this intelligent, swarm like being, facilitates the emergence of a consequent field of choreographic consciousness.

That is probably why I never felt choreographies are an account of reality, but rather a potential for the emergence of a parallel one.

Back to the constraints then, being that it is this, which is at the root of the process.

The laws which govern a choreographic system, usually have a defined purpose. Each rule (or constraint), has at its base a clear purpose in driving the choreographic situation, which then implies that the choreography itself, must have a purpose. But that purpose, the one of the choreographic thing as a whole, is being defined and achieved while the choreography evolves. A choreography is actively defining and achieving its purpose, only while it is happening. The purpose of a choreography, doesn’t precede its happening, but is actually a thing which is striving to come into fruition in real time. It can’t be set as a goal prior to the happening of the choreography. More than that, the purpose of a specific choreographic work, is changing and is being revealed every time that same choreography happens. And so, a choreography which is enslaved to a pre determined purpose, can not remain a living thing, as it is reduced to being an illustration of something external and therefore, it is no longer an autonomous, living entity.

Following this reasoning, the main goal of choreography making, should be the fine tuning of a system, as in the fine tuning of its governing laws, in order to facilitate its function as a conducive system, one where there’s a coherent alignment in its structuring of incentives, which is powerful enough to create its own autonomous intelligence and consequent consciousness fields.

And so, what about the initial observation made in this essay, regarding the active bending of the choreographic time/space dimensions?

If choreography, or more accurately, the happening of it, is capable of generating an autonomous intelligence, followed by the emergence of a distinct field of conciseness, it might explain how not only it isn’t bound by, or tied to a singular, external, fixed time/space realm, but it actually creates its own unique manifestations of these two dimensions.

In other words, it seems that maybe, just maybe, the end game of choreography, is the harnessing of human energy in order to generate live events, conducive and  powerful enough to serve as a portal of sorts, which enable accessing altered realms of consciousness.

And so if all this makes sense, it would mean that the quality of a choreographic work, is linked to the quality, strength and clarity of the consciousness field it manages to produce.

Civilization

Civilization is downstream of humans ability to collaborate.

All forms of human civilizations, are the result of that specific feature of humans.

Choreography as a practice, if approached with this notion in mind, is an ideal space where one can study how human collaboration functions, which environment enhances and which blocks collaborative behavior, what type of incentives drive different types of collaborative outcomes and how the emergence of value, both for the individuals and the group, is closely related to the quality of that collaborative state of things.

In that sense, choreography, is a study of civilization itself.

Meaning

Meaning can’t be deliberately created or brought about. The only thing choreography can do, is the creation of conditions which allow for the existence of potentials for emergent meanings.

Art IS

The artistic act can never exist indirectly. Art at its best is direct. It doesn’t play around. It doesn’t suggest. It is as direct as a tree is. A bird singing. A wave braking. Art doesn’t imply or points to. Art simply IS.

Self regulation/ Non intervention

Nature is self regulating.

People, being part of nature and when left to their own devices, tend to organize themselves through self regulating groups and systems.

Any form of central regulation, has to involve different forms and degrees of compliance, coercion and violence.

Choreographies, being that their subject matter is people and groups, are in essence self correcting systems. If the conditions for this are properly set forth, a choreography will naturally and consistently self correct and regulate. It will naturally strive to reach a state of balance regarding all of its aspects internally, with little to non external intervention. It will naturally collapse into a more efficient energy state, more agency and visibility for each of the dancers and an overall higher state of clarity.

The more a choreography needs external intervention, regulation and control in order to find this balance, the more fragile it is and the more limited it is in terms of potential growth and evolution over time. This is the reason why some choreographic works keeps on changing and evolving over time, while other stifle and waste all of their energy on trying to preserve some ideal state, which was reached at one point sometime in the past.

A self regulating choreographic work is looking forward, while a centrally controlled one, keeps all of its attention on the past.

One is alive, the other dead.

Choreographing then, is the act of carefully setting the conditions for such a self regulating system to emerge.

Peer to peer choreography

I never felt choreography is about dance, movement, the body, concepts, ideas, stories, political ideologies etc. That to me would be like saying water is about drinking, or swimming. Whereas what water is, is simply a chemical interaction between hydrogen and oxygen. You can drink it, swim in it, harness it to produce electricity etc, the water doesn’t really care. Non of the things one can do with water, actually defines what water is.

Choreography the way I see it, on its most profound level, follows the same logic. And maybe this explains best why choreography as a practice, is actually a small niche within what is usually referred to as - The dance world. The inherent confusion that dominates the field, has drowned the practice of choreography under a sea of use cases, to the point where it has almost become extinct.

Choreography doesn’t care what you use it for. It is separate from all that which it enables. And so if we look beyond what it allows and the use cases for it, in order to really SEE choreography for what it is at its highest form, what we can observe is that what choreography is actually made of, are interactions. That’s all.

If looked at from that angle, what choreographing means then, is creating the conditions for interactions. Therefore, when evaluating the intrinsic value of a choreographic work, one needs to first of all analyze its model of interactions management.

Art is in essence, a way to capture energy in an abstracted form. The specificity of the choreographic form, is the manner in which it manifest human time and energy in a concentrated, concrete, embodied form, through dancers’ being and doing. In that sense, it’s a unique form of concrete abstraction.

In other words, choreography is a base layer, a decentralized protocol, which allows dancers to harness, convert, channel, store and share their time and energy through the creation and the performance of a choreographic art work.

When looking at the way in which interactions are managed in the context of choreographic works, there are two models when it comes to how interactions happen - they can be centrally controlled and organized, or they can be peer to peer and decentralized.

People are always the subject matter of choreography, but it is the model and the system they are operating within, which defines the quality of the work. And when it comes to the different modalities of interactions dancers have access to, it is quite apparent whether they can interact freely with one another or not. It is easily observable whether they are operating from an autonomous, sovereign position, or if they are bound by an external authority who centralizes, pre-determine, control, limit, script and manage their actions.

There will always be far less visible interactions between dancers when they operate within a centralized system. Since all the action is determined by a central entity, it simply cancels the need for interaction and communication between the individual dancers. They will have almost no need to look at each other, no need to negotiate, no need to actively exchange about the thing happening etc.

On the other hand, the first thing which is strikingly visible in a decentralized choreographic system, is dancers’ constant eye contact, the on going state of negotiation regarding the moment and the thing taking place, the intense dialogues they are having with one another, not as a dramaturgical tool or theatrical content, but as a pragmatic necessity. A decentralized choreographic system, not only allows for that, it actually forces dancers to engage in constant peer to peer interactions, transactions, negotiations and so on. The quality, stability and coherence of a decentralized choreographic work, is a direct result of the richness, complexity and intensity of the sum of peer to peer interactions dancers are having between themselves.

But for this to happen, the choreographic protocol, has to be one which clearly enables, allows for and prioritize peer to peer interaction between autonomous, sovereign players within a network-like environment. It has to generate a set of incentives, where peer to peer interaction is the most efficient and beneficial action the dancers can engage in, both personally, as well as for benefiting the whole, as in, all other players, everyone involved in the production on and off stage, the work itself and as a result, the audience. For this to be sustainable, one has to ensure no centralized control, regulation, censorship, manipulation or management of the interactions taking place between the dancers, takes the upper hand.

The role of the choreographer then, is the creation and constant improvement of an open, neutral choreographic protocol.

Nicola Tesla famously said that if one wishes to understand the univers, one needs to think in terms of energy, vibration and frequency. Dancers energy, stored in their body and mind, translates into frequency though the vibration, which  surprisingly, isn’t happening as a result of their movements, but rather, through the interactions they engage in with one another. Just like the energy stored in a players hand, transform into sound frequency through the vibration of the string put into motion, the vibrational force which transform dancers’ energy into frequency, is happening in the realm of interactions. The strings vibrating, are dancers interacting.

Choreography then, is a technology that allows for these interaction to happen in the most efficient, productive and meaningful manner.

Know when to leave

If a choreographer steps into the studio, starts moving, and expects you to copy them, leave the room.

Against Repertoire - How did repertoire, ossified the natural evolution of the choreographic art form.

All the art forms that produce objects, artifacts, scores, texts, recordings etc, all of which remain available beyond their time of creation, sometimes literally for millennia and more, do so with the clear intention to transcend time, which in many art forms is a core drive for artists. The choreographic form on the other hand, is an art of its time. It refuses to be replicated in a meaningful way outside of its creator’s lifetime. All attempts to treat choreography like classical music for example, by holding on to scores of sort, mapping choreographic content as a series of movements and compositions in order to reconstruct a choreographic piece, result in nothing more than pale, artificial, awkward, lifeless and unoriginal replicas.

Choreography is an art from bound to its ephemerality as a performative art, but more than that, it is bound even stronger to its inevitable mortality as all living things are. It is unique in that sense that it is probably the one art form, which represents the cycle of life in the most profound manner. A choreographer’s ’touch’, is as singular and imperative to the art work, as that of a painter. It can’t be replicated by anyone who’s not the actual maker in a way that produces an original art work. In the same way a copy of a Picasso isn’t a real Picasso and is considered a fake, all choreographic works that were replicated in the absence of their original creator, are all forms of fake art works.

One simple analogy to illustrate the problematic nature of choreographic repertoire, would be to try and imagine how it would look if the cinema industry behaved in the same manner.

Imagine a world, where the majority of cinema productions today, would be re-production of old masterpieces of the genre. Imagine most of the current cinema world, being about reconstructing old films, as close as possible to the original thing, just with a new cast of actors. Same script, exact same camera shots, same locations and same art, same costumes, same type of acting, same dialogues, same editing, same soundtrack, same type of equipment at the time of the original production in order to produce the exact same visuals, same lighting, same everything. Literally, the same movie, just recreated with new actors and a new technical and production team. Imagine the main goal of all this, being the production of an identical film to the one copied, with the same title of course. How odd would that be?

well, that is exactly what is happening with most of the dance productions being created and presented.

Obviously, that realty has a major impact on the ability of an art form to evolve. Continuously recreating replicas of past art works, changes entirely the way new works are being created. If the cinema industry would invest most of its ressources in recreating the filmography of Hitchcock, Fellini or Godard, again and again in many parallel productions all focusing only on this, eventually, there wouldn’t be any possibility for new cinema artists to emerge, innovate and take the art form to new places. There would probably be no Tarantino in that imaginary world.

The difference between why this happens in dance but not in cinema, is obvious of course. Cinema produces recordings, filmed objects (which is the essence of the medium itself), and therefore, if one wishes to watch an old movie, they can do so easily. There’s no need to reproduce the thing as there is access to the original.  In dance, there’s no real possibility for that. And so for reasons that are all unrelated to the nature of the art form, the majority of the dance world has gradually shifted towards the production of replicas.

But the logic of the analogy, relates primeraly to the nature of these two art forms and therefore, it holds.

What happens on a movie set, the way a script is translated into images, the way a film is edited, all of which is orchestrated through the physical presence of the movie director, is the exact same thing which happens in choreography. It is the sum of the decisions a choreographer takes, and the time spent in the same space interacting with the dancers, that makes a choreographic work what it is. It cannot be summed up in any score. It’s the thing all living interactions and organismes are made of, and like all living organismes, it is alive only till it ceases to be. Once dead, no living organism can be brought back to life and new life takes the place of that which has died. Keeping alive that which has died, is an inherent impossibility. Things which are alive, are alive through the singularity of their specific aliveness, only for a limited duration of time.

The choreographic art form, doesn’t need the obsessive remounting of the works of Petipa, Balanchine, Cunningham or Bausch (all probably rolling in their graves). Their art would anyway be transmitted through the generations in the same way people transfer their DNA to their offsprings. Nothing would have been lost on the way. On the contrary, that is what allows for evolution through natural selection. What stays, stays for a reason. What is lost, is lost for good reasons too.

The insistance to keep directing most of the attention and ressources of the field towards preserving these dead works of dead artists in an artificial manner, ossify what needs to be a dynamic and ever evolving process of evolution. It is a literal weight holding back what would have otherwise, be a natural process of continuous and organic evolution.

But even worse that this, what the growing presence of dance repertoire has done is, it has pushed most makers to create works that are in tune with this logic. Choreographers, consciously or not, are creating works which can be recreated in their absence. It’s as if the notion that a choreographic work must be summed up in a score which will enable its reproduction in the future, regardless of the presence of its maker, became inherent to what a choreographic work is thought to be. Something like - If most of the work being produced and presented is by dead choreographers, I better make my work in a way that aligns with that logic.

The choreographic art form in the west, developed in the same artistic and cultural circles as those of the already well codified music world, which is probably the reason for the adoptions of certain logics regarding repertoire, scores, notation and the overall attitude regarding the preservation of an oeuvre over time by the choreographic world. The problem though, is that although music and choreography share many aspects related to the manner in which they think about and structure their respective artistic materials, they are completely on opposite sides in relation to the ability to summarize the essence of the work in the form of a fixed score. This relates to the fact that music, being the highest form of artistic abstraction, lends itself naturally to the logic of notation systems. It is very much detached from the time in which it was made and the people who made it, while choreography, probably the most concrete of all art forms as it’s made with, by, and through people’s bodies and consciousness, rejects all attempts to be fixed, notated, and reduced to any type of score. But also, it is extremely limited in its capacity to preserve its core essence when it is being kept alive beyond a certain amount of time and disconnected from its creator’s singular ‘touch’.

All things abstract, travel lightly through time, while that which is concrete, does not. That’s why we can converse with and relate to ideas from thousands of years before our time, but as much as we would have liked to, we cannot meet the actual person who developed them for coffee and a chat.

Trying to maintain alive a repertoire of choreographic works, is to misunderstand and limit choreography. It is like insisting on physically meeting a person who has died.

A choreographic art work, is tied to the inevitability of its own mortality like no other art work in other domains is. To resist this reality, is to harm, slow down, divert and block its evolution. Letting go, as a practice but also a deep philosophical idea, is the first and last thing to understand when it comes to choreography as art.

Choreography

Choreography is just one way, among many others, to try and understand the nature of the univers. It’s a series of questions, formulated through the practice of organizing human action in time and space.

The entire choreographic process, is about figuring out possible effective questions. Every choreographic work which attempts to, and is focused on providing answers, is anything but choreography, or art for that matter.

The choreographic game happens only in the presence of questions, followed by observation, which leads to more questions.

The great replacement

If art is not about the Devine, that which is sacred and therefore makes present a world view guided by and striving for a moral outlook on everything that is, then it is bound to be replaced by a maniacal race for power, pathological hedonism and self centered nihilism.

2x15

If I need to resume everything I’ve learned about choreography in the first 15 years I’ve been practicing it, it will be the flowing:

There are two ways to approach choreography, one is inventing, the other is uncovering.

One can either pre plan, pre decide, come up with a finite concept, idea, story, content and so on, and then use the choreographic process in order to manifest that thing, which was pre planned.

Or, one can use the choreographic process in order to discover, or uncover existing logics, systems, mechanisms etc, as a way to tap into what already exists. To try and figure out what already IS.

If I try to summarize what I learned during the next 15 years of working with choreography, it would be something along these lines:

The first approach to choreography, the one who tries to invent an art work, is dependent on the presence of a centralized system/creative process.

The second, can only happen in an environment based on modalities of decentralization, where everyone involved has both a say and a stake in the process and resulting work.

Choreography, the way I see it, is a process of figuring out the best strategies for allowing the creation of a system, which enhances collaborative behavior through sets of incentives and emergent consensus. For this to happen, the impact the decisions of each separate, self governing, sovereign, free player has over the whole, must be significant, and the model under which the choreographer is working, must imply a well defined type of authority and leadership, one which is able to see the work through the eyes of the dancers and is restricted mainly to that which is absolutely imperative to keeping a decentralized system functional. The choreographer aught to be the assistant and the foundation of the choreographic thing, nothing more, nothing less.