The only reason for giving notes (also, quite revealingly, referred to as ‘corrections’) to dancers during a creative process, is if it will help them with directing their attention to where it’s most needed in order to better understand the choreographic thing.
The culture in the space though, is that notes are usually a controlling mechanism used mainly to assert hierarchy and dominance for reasons that are foreign or even contradictory to those of dancers or the choreographic thing itself.
A valuable note guides dancers on how to think, where to look, what questions are they trying to answer, understanding the different problems they are trying to solve etc, helping them to best navigate within the process.
A valuable note is one that serves dancers in the process of studying the choreographic thing, not one that dictates external instruction regarding the execution of specific things.
If when given a note it triggers thinking, you know it’s a valid note, if on the other hand it clarifies what you have to do, you’re being controlled. A note is something that should feel like a question, not an instruction.
The question of notes though, is but a symptom of a larger phenomena.
The average dancer doesn’t want to be free, they want to be safe. The average choreographer wants the same and therefore, will never accept dancers who want to be free as the only way in which they can find safety as makers, is through exerting and maintaining direct control over the dancers’ actions, bodies and minds. In this unfortunate coincidence of wants, reside most of the problems related to the choreographic art form.
For it to be addressed properly, there’s a need for a paradigm shift in both the educational and professional spaces. One that affirmes clearly that the basic initial condition required for choreography making, is the pre definition of the creative space as being permission-less and based upon voluntary participation of sovereign individuals, carving their own paths through trial and error, experimentation and continuous study of the choreographic thing.
Since safety and creativity are opposing concepts, till we expose the culture of covert mental and physical slavery (that seems to be the norm in the space) for what it is, there is little hope for a meaningful change.
