Letter to a panicking friend

Letter to a panicking friend,

It takes time until it starts looking like something. Don't let the way it looks in the beginning frighten you.
Keep generating as much material as possible as well as compositional ideas, tools and strategies. Don't give notes to what you see and try to delay having an opinion about the outcome as long as you can.
Give the dancers tasks that allow you to sit and watch and do nothing for long periods. Look without trying to find the answer. just look. then, you will notice immediately the few interesting things that are happening.
Don't think of the time you have - I know its hard, but you have to work as if you have one year to do it.
Trust the dancers and what they do instinctively. 
Until the very end, dont give any corrections about movement to anyone. You can do that in the end if necesary.
Try to spot what are the new things they offer you, stuff you don’t know, even if its very different from what you are used to or what you expected.
Don't be afraid to do things you already did and use ideas you already used somewhere else - this is usually the best place to start. it will anyway change a lot during the process so you dont have to worry about repeating yourself. it often looks like a stupid school thingy at the beginning. If you stay calm and make room for the dancers, it will morph into something else very fast.
And remember, it's a game:)

Accents/stops

Dancers like to accent movements. All the movements. All the time. (not to mention insert significant stops every two movements...)
You have nothing more counterproductive than accents and stops over-used or misused. On the other hand, there's nothing that makes a dance phrase clearer and more charged with meaning than these two when used effectively. 

Either or

Choreography is either a tool of separation, or connectedness. It is either inclusive, or exclusive. 

Dude, it’s not about the movements I tell you!

It's never about the mouvements. It is a terrible reduction of what choreography can be, to make this the focal point. And in any case, even dancing is not really about dancing, but mostly about commitment, attentiveness, a sense of responsibility, pleasure, loyalty and interaction. 

Repeat

We always choreograph the same three questions, it’s just that we always come up with different answers.

Getting old/wise

Choreographic maturity is watching your dancers take a direction you're not comfortable with, and say nothing. 

Tasks

The most urgent task contemporary dance should embrace today, is the emancipation of the dancer through allowing her/him to become a fully independent, active and aware choreographic thinker/practitioner. 

Chill

You don't MAKE choreography, choreography HAPPENS.

Come together

Individual actions that don't come together in a way which renders them parts of a system, are a waste of choreographic time.

Context

Context is everything.

Making room

I'm not in the business of telling people what to do, I rather make room for people. Room for them to do their thing. Now making room, effective room, one that frees them while giving them a safe and coherent context, is a very subtle and complex endeavor. In a way, it's what I think choreography means, making room for dancers.  

Virtuosity

The definition of virtuosity, depends on the context you're placing it in and the system it is serving. 

Balance

Dancing is constantly looking for the right balance between reacting and acting. Listening and talking.

Gardening

My choreography is about the process of continuously nourishing fields of possibilities, and then waiting to see what happens.

So tell me, what is it about?

Making any work of art, a comment about one theme/subject/story/idea/concept, is the single worst strategy a maker can adopt. The more the work isn't bound to one thing, the more it can speak accurately about most things. 

Adding

I dont think of choreography as an act of documentation, story telling, self expression etc.  For me It's rather a process of observation, culminating with ADDING something to the world.  So If I'm in the business of adding things to the world, I rather make them positive ones.

Delete

Falling in love with one’s material, doesn’t allow to judge it in the context of the entire piece. Deleting extremly good chunks of choreography, becouse they make no sense in relations to the larger context, should be a daily practice. 

Reasons

Dance is about people in search of a good reason to move.
Choreography is about finding good reasons to move from one situation to the next.

Answer to a journalist

Answer to a journalist,

To answer your question regarding actions/images used in the choreography and the possible intentions behind - I'm afraid there are non. I can understand how those actions/images can be read in different ways, and I'm perfectly ok with that (there is no "official" version to what the work is about). I create and organize movements/people in time and space - it’s as simple as that. I am interested in the work itself, its mechanism, its logic, the tools used in making it etc. The way I see it, what is actually taking place on stage, is the focal point, and not whatever that might represent - it is not trying to discuss themes outside the onstage action itself.
Of course it is a completely different story for any individual in the audience, which is free to understand and make sense of that as he/she wants.

Facilitating

Any choreographic work who's focal point is the choreographer, her/his ability, talent, craftsmanship, ideas, stories, opinions etc, rather than the dancers involved, the audience watching and the artistic process, is a form of autistic masturbation. It will always lack the authenticity of an event taking place in the real world, and will not allow the audience to become engaged partners of the work. 

Choreographing, is facilitating.