Since we are the products of a civilisation based upon lies, and we currently live in societies organized around perpetual deceit, the purpose and role of art making, should be truth seeking.
Clarity/Content
Clarity, as in how clearly things are organized and executed/interpreted, is in itself, content.
Where is it?
Each specific choreographic piece, is to be found within the group of dancers in front of you. It can not be a pre existing external concept imposed upon them. Different dancers mean different works.
Choreography is a hand made artifact, refusing any form of transcription or reproduction. For the simple reason both its subject matter and operating mechanisms, are relying on living individual human beings.
TALK
The more choreographers talk while working, the less they know what they’re doing.
The Three Principles for structuring a healthy choreographic environment/system
First principle - recognition of needs
When a social system (a dance company being first and foremost a form of condensed social system), looks down upon individuals, disrespect their self authority and focuses on controlling/fixing them, its effectiveness is highly compromised.
The key to transformative effectiveness, is to be found when addressing them at eye level, figuring out their needs and involving them in the process of finding solutions for these needs.
A creative process that doesn’t look through the lens of the dancers’ needs, will not produce a healthy outcome, since it is reproducing destructive notions of separateness, control, hierarchy and competitiveness (which are the dominant and prevailing denominators of the existing social and work systems today).
- Second principal - Embracing complexity
Complex situations and problems, require specific and individually adapted answers. Each dancer and each situation within the group and overall process, must be met with specific answers, after evaluating and considering the needs in each case. ‘One solution fits all’, handed down by an external authority, simplify complex situations, thus reducing its effectiveness. There isn’t one perspective, which can be used as the default when looking for solutions for a complex situation such as a group of individuals engaged in a creative choreographic process. There’s always a need to form adaptable mechanisms, and a culture of collaboration between the different individuals in view of their respective needs, in order to come up with an holistic solution, based on the dancers willingness to assume a position of responsibility for both their needs and the agreed upon solutions.
- Third principal - systemic support
Although each individual within the group requires a great deal of autonomy in order to achieve self fulfillment, it also needs systemic support so not to have to ‘walk in the dark’, and figure out everything from scratch. This support might include sharing of existing tools, transfer of already acquired knowledge between new and veteran dancers, a coherent long term vision of the system in which they operate, ongoing adaption and a general flexibility of the ways in which the system operates, attention to personal needs outside of the studio and creative process and a sense of meaning.
A healthy and productive social/choreographic system, is the result of a dialogue between the choreographer, which provides dancers with space, time, ressources, tools, physical financial and emotional support and a coherent vision, and the dancers, who operate as autonomous, flexible and adapting individuals, creating and sharing information and content with the choreographer, which is then returned back to them through a série of new questions and propositions for reevaluation.
This ongoing dialogue, is where the choreographic process takes place. But it is only present and functioning, when all three principals are maintained and respected. Resulting in a transformative improvement in the well being of dancers, reduced suffering and an optimisation of shared ressources.
Choreographic Work
Three questions to answer:
how to organize movement in time and space
How to dialogue/interact with music (lack there of)/sound
How to relate to the theatrical/dramaturgical/performative aspect
About/Is
I don’t set out to make work which is ABOUT something. I want to make work that IS a thing.
Managment
Art making is a form of fear management, choreography, is mostly about risk managmanet.
Repertoire
Everything choreography is concerned with, is already known. It might be forgotten knowledge, but it is never new. Choreography is a way to trigger out of amnesia, through action, questions and reflection, what is already known. It readdresses the well known, so it can be seen from new angles, get reacquainted with and understood better.
In that sense, repertoire, as a concept and practice, is poisonous. It stifles the mind and shuts close the space for reevaluation, rediscovery and organic progression.
Action
Choreographing, which is observing and organizing behavior and conduct (preferably and as much as possible, not through remembered or pre-established procedures), when based on ideology, ceases to be.
Choreography is action. Idea is one thing, and action is another.
When one tries to conform or modify actions according to ideas, there is no more action, and therefore, no more choreography.
Ideas
When ideas take the place of craftsmanship, know-how and expertise, art goes out the window.
Ideas are too frail, temporary, subjective, fluid and inconsistent to be able to serve as the core motivation for art making. They depend on specific contexts and are the result of endless conditioning, and therefore, are limited in their capacity to offer the open, uncharted space the artistic process requires.
Craftsmanship on the other hand, is the gateway through which art can serve its purpose best, beyond concepts and agendas.
Ideas tend to accumulate, they multiply and produce more and more ideas, which then fill the space and stifle the mind.
They are the result of memory, past experience and future projection, all forms of conditioning, while what art needs most, are empty unconditioned spaces and minds.
There is no art in ideas. (There might be ideas in art though...)
When Things Fall Apart
When reaching stability is the main focus of a choreographic process, choreography ceases to be. Sooner or later any form of stability becomes unsatisfactory, because no problem has an answer apart from the problem itself.
Any form of artificially sustained stability, ends up injecting destructive forms of instability into a system.
Choreography as a living phenomenon, happens in the constant movement between reaching stability and loosing it, only to strive to find it once again within a different constellation and reorganization of the different elements.
In this dynamic space, lies the core essence and drive of a choreographic work.
Whenever it stops making sense, that’s when the opportunity for renewed sense presents itself.
The question remains, why bother?
Inter(re)action
If dancing isn’t reacting, it’s muted, nonsensical, mindless, arbitrary, limited, artificiel, mechanical, automatic.
The only way in which separate lines of dancing become choreography, is through them being a ‘reaction to’ (whatever calls for reactivity). A response to a challenge, which doesn’t leave a cumulative residue as memory. A discovery from moment to moment, an emergence of intentions beyond self projections.
Dancing (within a choreographic context) is an answer to a question. It’s the solution to a problem. An act of reciprocity between situation and (re)action.
Look, observe, process, make up your mind, move (ideally, all of these happening at the same time).
photo: [SUNNY] Julia Gat
What Is
To understand choreography, is to understand ‘what is’. The actual thing taking place, happening, during the creative process, as well as when performed.
This alone brings about the creative emptiness in which choreography can enter, evolve and come into being.
As the answer to a problem is in the problem, so choreography is in ‘what is’. Understanding this, is understanding choreography.
Choreography can only be seen through intense attention, which is the result of observation with an empty mind.
It’s useful to remember though, that most people who come into contact with a choreographic work, don’t do so with an empty mind. Professionals and non professionals alike, watch a choreography with a conditioned mind, with expectations, acquired tastes, agendas, habits etc.
In this impossible and often frustrating gap, lies the true challenge of choreography making and the questions regarding its relevance.
SHOCK
Shocking your audience, as an artistic strategy, seems to be the opposite of respecting your audience and wanting them to have a meaningful experience.
When we're shocked, we naturally pull away. If a bomb blows in front of us, we might be drawn to look at it, but we're still moving away from it. We won't come closer and engage really. When an audience is shocked, the option for a dialog with the work is being handicaped. A shocked audience might be intrigued or put under spell, but it won't be open nor feel safe to engage with the work.
The fact that this is regarded as a central tool and a desired goal for making work, is symptomatic to the loss of artistic vision and the understanding of art’s role as a healing medium.
Unschooling
One of the most harmful phenomenas in the dance world, yet rather a very common one, is individuals who think their own specific way of moving should be turned into a generic technique, and be taught/imposed as such to dancers. The damages, both physical and mental of this prevailing way of thinking about dance, are immeasurable.
Imitation offers a very limited space for learning, and it’s a sure way to stifle any form of creativity in students/dancers.
The worrying fact most dancers are attracted to those kind of ‘techniques’, has more to do with the general education system than dance in particular.
Dear Oscar
Paraphrasing Oscar Wild - Conversation (choreography) should touch everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing.
Give me a reasonnnn
Movement at its most coherent state, is usually a means to something rather than the aim. In service of, rather than the subject matter.
Running makes full physical sense when chasing, racing or running away from.
Choreography should provide dancers with immediate, clear, urgent, sensible, evident reasons to move. It should free them from the need to pretend, or come up with artificial motivations for the movements they are doing. Movement for movement sake is where dancing becomes self indulgent, muted, futile. It’s where choreography comes to a still point, stagnates and turns abusive.
Keep it alive
The more a choreography tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.
Enabling
The way I see it, choreography is simply the act of creating a frame which enables the generation, or rather the emergence, of meaning.
