In/De

Choreographies are either inflationary, or they are deflationary.

They either create spaces of scarcity and lack, or they bring about abundance.

Problem/Solution

Choreographic models, processes, strategies and methodologies, should be looked at as SOLUTIONS to the problems of human societies. Otherwise, they’re part of the problem.

Input/Output

The work isn’t about controlling the output, it’s about studying the input.

Choreographic proceses cannot be led by their visual manifestation. The visual outcome, can only be an unintentional result of a process based on completely different aspects of the work.

It is not about how it looks, it’s about - why is it doing what it does?

This or That

Choreographies are either extractive based systems, or they are cooperative ones.

Centrally controlled systems are extractive by nature, which means they are coercion based by default.

Decentralized systems, being that they are voluntary to start with, are cooperative by nature, making coercion and central control inefficient.   

Decentralized systems are about unleashing the combined potential of all of the participants towards a shred goal, to the benefit of everyone involved.

The future of choreography making, is tightly linked to its ability to abandon its historical legacy as an extractive, coercive, centrally controlled practice, and adopt new, decentralized models.

Principles

Choreographic makers, do not DEVELOP choreographic principles. All they can do, is DISCOVER existing ones.

Choreographies are manifestation of that which is already in existence. No one gets to invent natural laws, nor the nature of human beings.

Stay humble - all you get to do, is study what is already there.

People/Natural Law

Being that space/time are its main fields of reference, Choreography, is a study into natural law.

Yet choreographies, are comprised of people. People are comprised of emotions, instincts, intuition, ideas, opinions, habits, needs and so on.

Choreography then, is the social engineering of the convergence space between natural law and humans.

Rules/Freedom

The paradoxical manner in which rules based systems work is, that if you adhere to the rules, the realm of freedom increases rather than decreases. Systems governed by a well structured set of rules, are the reversal of constraints.

Ethos

One option for a unifying ethos for the choreographic process can be: Choreographies are strategies for individual, voluntary, yet joint agreement on patterns of movement towards a shared goal.

Irreversible

The concept of irreversibility, points to that of time itself.

Human action, is energy and unfolding time intertwined.

Choreographies happening, are irreversible events. There isn’t the option to correct the choreographic thing as it’s happening. Choreographies are time passing itself.   

Irreversibility means consequence, which points to the notion of accountability.

Therefore, choreographies are people managing consequences and accountability in real time.

Selection Vs. Choice

Selection and choice are not the same thing.

Choreography, has to offer access to choice, rather than the limited premise of selection.

Selection breads expediency, which regresses the entire system to a mangble medium where everybody has effective neutrality, whereas choice, implies a system which doesn’t try to micromanage or control its own outcome.

Selection, is a form of manipulation, giving the appearance of choice, while actually limiting it in order to control the outcome.

Selection is the sly roundabout tool of centralized systems. Choice, is the default strategic approach of decentralized, permission-less systems.

For this to happen, the choreographer has to accept what most makers are reluctant to even look at:

The fact that until the ego is eclipsed by one’s subservience to both the choreographic process and the dancers who use it, one cannot lead in a meaningful, moral and productive manner.

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 the choreographic 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

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.