You either make the unison better, or you make the dancers better. Better dancers, better work though, and as a side effect, in the long run, not surprisingly, better unison.
Dead rep
In dance and choreography, the concept and practice of repertoire, in the case of dead choreographers, is a form of artistic cannibalism.
Usually fueled by commercial and political interests, always taking the aroma of some sort of touristic artifact.
There is no real dance making, without the presence of the choreographer and in the absence of a direct interaction between choreographer and dancers.
The art of choreography isn’t about movements. That would be like claiming cooking is about the recepie and has nothing to do with the chef.
Is it political?
My work is NOT political. The way I work, IS.
Who’s asking?
I used to think creating was about coming up with the right questions.
I start thinking that in reality, what I’m busy with is trying to answer the multitude of questions being thrown my way by the work itself. The work, the artistic process, is actually producing the questions. I’m just trying to keep up with answering.
What I misinterpreted as actively coming up with questions, was actually just being focused and attentive to hearing/seeing the questions as they arise from the work itself.
Choreography is pizza
Choreography, is the art of crafted assembly and organization of different, distinct elements, through time and space.
Pizza, is a simple yet genius example of the art of cuisine - the assembly of distinct, different ingredients - dough, tomatoes and mozzarella - through the process of oven baking.
We immediately recognize the essence of pizza, through how it looks, its smell, taste and texture. The experience and concept of pizza are obvious to us. We intuitively recognize the specific result of the assembly of these ingredients, in that specific manner, as pizza.
In the same way in which tomatoes are NOT pizza, movement, or dance for that matter, isn’t choreography. In order for choreography to be, there must be a crafted, creative (preferably original) process of assembly and organization of few distinct elements into a whole, a kinetic structure which is a separate entity. It’s about the assembly, the organization, the whole, transcending the building blocks and becoming its own thing.
Yet, what we are being served at most dance performances, is tomatoes. Or mozzarella. Or dough. And as good as the quality of these separate ingredients might be, it’s still not pizza.
A pizzeria serving only tomatoes, is actually a tomatoes shop. It can’t claim the title of pizzeria.
Not that there’s anything wrong with tomatoes, and if that’s what you came for, then great! But if like me, you go to dance performances expecting to get choreography, and you’re wondering why most dance pieces make you feel indifferent or worse, starving, it’s simply cause you’re not being served what you came for - pizza.
Also, some pizzas are made so poorly, you might get sick after digesting them.
#chorographygeek
Choreography
Choreography, from a social perspective, being that its main subject matter through the presence of dancers, is people, is an ongoing investigation and analysis of how power is being organized in the context of human groups and relations.
From an artistic perspective though, choreography is the main field, alongside music, in which the practice of looking into the alchemy of how to organize separate lines of information (through time and space) into one coherent whole (as in, counterpoint), is the main focus. Defining its specificities as a field of knowledge, a space of study and a meaning producing practice.
Looking at choreography nowadays, reveals the surprising, yet obvious, truth, that choreography is actually a small niche within the larger ‘dance world’, which main focus is on movement techniques/styles/languages, theoretical and philosophical concepts, political manifestos and social agendas, therapeutic processes, story telling, formalistic esthetics, autobiographical diaries, performance art, entertainment etc.
Choreography, the practice, research and craft, is completely absent from almost every dance work made and presented today, regardless of the fact someone is usually credited for ‘choreography’ - a term generally misused and a practice often misunderstood.
Understanding where choreography is actually situated within the context of dance making in general - a small, fringe, (avent guard?) niche - is of great value to those who’s artistic focus is indeed, choreography.
Décentralisation
Décentralisation
The most subversive and urgent strategy choreography making can adopt nowadays, is décentralisation.
If there’s any sense whatsoever in looking outside the studio and choreographic process, for any sort of substance worth relating to, it’s this.
Decentralizing the conventional structure of hierarchies between choreographer and dancers, rethinking the distribution of power and responsibilities, coming up with new ways of defining what choreography/dance making can actually be, is the most valuable manner in which dance can become a relèvent force in pointing out societal anomalies and proposing alternatives.
Luckily, it’s also the surest way to avoid making bad choreography, repeat/copy others, ensure originality, make for happy, empowered and engaged dancers, bring forth a sense of meaning, change the established paradigms and rescue dance from its current free fall into all effect / zero structure default mode. Effect is always the result of centralized power, while structure emerges organically only when centralized control is being dismantled.
Centralized power, be it in politics, economics, art making, education and whichever other form of ‘humans organizing themselves’, is always the lesser choice. Benefiting the few in perverted ways and harming the many. Down spiraling rather then uplifting. Limiting, dumbing, numbing, oppressing, confusing.
#decentrlize
Post intensive thoughts
Dancers, do not automatically obey choreographers.
Authority, like trust, should be earned. Let them sweat at convincing you their proposition is of value for you. You are many, they are few. Learn your worth and power.
Your time, energy, work, effort, creativity and sweat should be rightfully earned. By choreographers. Not the other way around.
It’s choreographers that are mainly at test. It’s choreographers that are continuously being auditioned. By dancers.
Reverse the pyramid.
Expose the crooks. The opportunists. The talentless. The power driven. The psychopathes, the sadistic. The manipulative and exploitative.
Emancipate yourself.
No choreographers, if no dancers. Don’t forget.
This goes beyond dance, but dance is a great place to start.
How/What
Choreography isn’t about telling dancers what to do. It’s about the development and sharing of tools and machinismes in order for dancers to be able to make their own minds and decisions.
In the same way in which teaching should be about teaching how to think, rather than what to think.
Perspective
I look at the world through the prism of the choreographic process, rather than at the choreographic process threough the prism of the world.
I don’t make work in order to comment about the world, I make work in order to understand the world.
An art work which emerges from the need to comment about the state of the world, would be better off reduced to an article in the opinions section in a daily newspaper. Or a political party.
Also, the easiest way to know if a work is based upon an internal or rather external perspective, is to examin the connectivity between the performers. The more they are separated between each other, the more the work is busy with looking outside and commenting about what it perceives. The more they seem connected, the more the work is the result of its own processes and substances.
What’s interesting to note is, that eventually, the later option gives us so much more in terms of addressing the world, its state and our place in it.
Talent
What is talent?
It is simply a form of acute insight into certain types of substances and processes. A form of innate understanding.
It’s having access.
Passive/active/tools
Some choreographies are like swings at a playground - passive potential in static form, waiting to be unleashed by the user.
And others, are like rollercoasters - already dynamic, kinetic structures, extracting reactivity from whomever goes on them.
A third and more complex kind, are a sort of hybrid of these two basic options, requiring an adjustable approach by the dancers when engaging with them.
In order to maximise the choreographic potential of each different type of choreography, there must be an aware process of engagement and an adapted operation strategy put in place by both the choreographer and dancers.
Not all choreographies can be danced in the same manner. Choreographies are tools, and so reading (or writing) the manual before using them, is indispensable.
Choreography/The World
A choreography that needs and depends upon pre declared themes in order to justify its existence, isn’t one. At best, it’s an handicapped one.
Is the ‘world’ in need of themes and arguments in order to justify its existence or explain itself?
In that sense, choreography behaves like music, rather than literature, theater or most of the useless visual art being made today, in which all there is, is the argument, concept, theme etc, taking the place of an actual art work.
Choreography, just like music, is free from the need to base itself upon external themes and concepts.
In general, you can’t make art about something. Art requires a void that shouldn’t be filled.
The fact it is extremely rare to come upon such choreographic work, speaks volumes about the state of the art form
Also, ‘dear diary’, isn’t a valid choreographic strategy.
Creation
A choreography needs no agenda infused into it.
No personal interests, wishes, views, stories. opinions and so on. They have no place in the process of creation nor in the resulting work.
The choreography should remain free from the influence and personal agendas of its maker.
What creating should focus on, is constructing a space abounded with everything that’s needed for its autonomous existence and evolution.
The maker does not and shouldn’t determine the narrative.
If there’s an aim, a goal, a plan, then it’s EXECUTION. CREATION happens when non of these are in the way.
In that sense, the act of creation means the creation of the ‘world’ in which the work is then free to happen.
Utopia
Choreography, being a practice of organizing groups of people in action, can and must be a manner of pointing towards ideal forms and systems for individuals and societies. Regardless of the achievability of these utopian models, the fact a certain choreographic system shows clear evidence of being beneficial for the group involved, is in itself of great value.
A daily practice of striving to achieve, within the artistic realm, that which is un-achievable (and probably has no place) in the real world.
Also, making art while looking back, is lazy.
People and Art
The idea that all art should be accessible to all people, is a misunderstanding of art and people.
Different art, for different people, for different reasons and different purposes.
The artist and the system / the inherent paradox
Artists go through three distinct phases on their artistic process/career (in the case they manage to assure the creative longevity needed and actually make it through all three):
The promising young talent.
The mature prime maker.
The established confirmed master.
The system, as in, the programmers, critics, gate keepers, decision makers, trends deciders and so on, can benefit mostly from the first and last phases. These are the two phases of an artist’s career, when engaging and supporting the work, is the most valuable for their own careers, goals and agendas.
Spotting new raw talent, claiming to have a part in discovering and promoting new artistic voices, shines back directly upon them. It validates their own existence as active players, confirms their original outlook and gives them an active role within the artistic field they’re engaged with.
The same can be said about the nature of the relationships they foster with confirmed masters at the last phase of their creative lives. Promoting and presenting old confirmed masters, those rare few who reach this level of indisputable recognition in the quality of their craft, is a sure way to once again, confirm and put forward their own qualities, tastes, awareness of the field they’re part of, appreciation of good work and their active role in writing the big story of the art form.
These are win win situations for both the artists, and the players representing the ‘system’.
However, during the second phase in artists’ creative lives, the phase in which they obtain a deep understanding and mastery of their craft, the phase in which they are the most productive, creative, daring, at the hight of their ability to produce good work, challenge the norms, open new creative pathways, while still having the energy and clarity to do so at the highest level, that phase, is of little value for those people who gladly engage with the same artists at their first or last phases.
They simply can not make that phase about themselves in any way. It stops being a win win situation. And so, most of them will disengage at that point. Only to come back when/if the artist made it to the last phase.
The reason for this is simple - In that phase, what comes forth, leaving little space for anything else, is the work itself. The work becomes the focal point. The novelty of something new vanishes, while the aura of a grand master, and everything that comes with it, is still not established.
In that specific moment, when all there is, is simply the work, the choice to keep engaging with it requires both a deep understanding of the artistic form (unfortunately rarely at hand) and the humility needed to accept being in service of something bigger than yourself. A situation far less beneficial in how it can be harnessed and reclaimed for other purposes besides presenting and promoting good art.
It’s an inherent paradox in almost all artistic fields. When artists are at their creative prime, it’s much harder to convert their work and the relationship with them, into parallel fields of value.
The work becomes free. And so does the artist.
It can’t be ridden as a force in service of other purposes. Is shines only upon itself and its audience. It’s no longer a transactional commodity or currency.
Note to myself - just keep doing.
Creation
Creation happens in the future. Even though it’s made in a constantly moving present, it aims to a point in the future where it will ‘become’.
Be.
Whatever it is that’s being created.
When creating through/with the mind, one can only base oneself on past knowledge and experience. One only has available, what the mind has already experienced, processed and analyzed.
And so, creating the future with tools and perceptions of the past, is bound to stifle and fail. It’s called repeating.
What creation needs then, is to be guided and driven by something else rather than the mind. Something that isn’t bound to time. Some other way of processing information, and a whole different muscle for decision making.
Odd as it may seem, the more ‘educated’ an artist is, the less it seems they have access to that realm. The more they base themselves on past knowledge and perceptions (their own or that of others) in order to try and make new things, the more they repeat ad eternum what has already been done.
Creation requiers a leap of faith and a whole lot of unlearning, in order to shut down the formatted and conditioned mind and open up to a more effective way of doing.
Times they are a changing?
In an era governed by deceit and simplistic populism, deceitful, simplistic and populist art reigns supreme.
What is choreography
A process of reverse engeniering focused on the understanding (through practice) of consciousness and self choice, as the two central factors of the human experience.
