Choreographing has a lot to do with understanding the power the things you do and say have, as well as that of those you don’t. In that sense, choreographing requires choosing and elaborating a management model.

The position of the ‘know all, decide all’ creator/manager, results in a specific language and a specific type of management, which influences heavily the choreographic process and the works created.

When one makes decisions for others, it frees them from being responsible for their actions. It frees them from thinking. And as a result, frees them from having to study and understand the process they are part of.

The other option, is designing a process, through a different management model, which focuses on how individuals and the group they form, reach decisions, rather than how authority does.

In that type of work and management model, the choreographer concentrates less on coming up with content and solving ‘choreographic problems’ and more on studying and adjusting the process itself.

The hierarchical management model, very much a residue of the industrial age, where unity, conformity, obedience, similarity and elimination of differences are core aspects, had an immense influence on the way choreography was created and is still very much apparent in most of the work being made. An overwhelming amount of choreographic works, are basically a superficial blue print of the choreographer, who gets to decide and determine what dancers are doing and how they do it, rather than being a group endeavor carried out by free individuals with direct agency.   

There needs to be a shift from a centralized model of management that is ‘orders driven’ to one that is ‘intent based’. The role of the choreographer then, is the creation of a space of shared intentions, where the dancers can then self govern themselves within the group through communication, negotiation with one-another and proposition making, guided by what they identify as a shared intent.