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.