Life and Death

“So what were you imagining when you decided to make that piece?” Is probably the one question I get asked the most.

You don’t imagine art. You do it.

A choreographic work is something which takes shape, matures and reveals itself slowly. You have to wait and see what it becomes. The only thing that is under your control, is moving with clarity. Staying attentive and observant. Reacting to what the work asks of you. Creating a space which facilitates growth, evolution and coming into full being.

And then, letting it die.

Choreographic works are a living organism. They die eventually. They stop being. Keeping choreographic works alive after they died, is like mechanically keeping a person alive after brain death.

‘Dance experts’, love dead choreographic works. They call it - repertoire. Repertoire, is good for business. And politics.

It’s subjective

Art is usually considered as subjective. There’s nothing further than the truth.

What is subjective, is the experience and perception of it by different people at different places and times. The truth about what a work of art is though, isn’t.

It is permanently objective.

It has nothing to do with opinion, taste or preference. It is the thing it is, regardles of how it is seen. Only the perception of the art work is subjective, the work itself, what it actually IS, is objective, separate and detached from its external perception.

Stories

Dancing shouldn’t be an act of shoving your own story down everyone’s throats, but rather an attempt to produce clarity through doing, which allows whom ever engages with it to experience their own story.

Dancing which is forcefully interpretative, deprives the viewers from having their own experience, rendering them passive and irrelevant.

Good dancing is more a white page, than it is an already written story.

Conflict

Choreographing, when practiced as an art form, requiers constant management of the inherent conflict, which lies between the scientific and the religious.

Why don’t I say what I’m about to do

I always try to share as little as possible with the dancers about what we’re going to do, before we actually start working.

I do the same with myself somehow, I don’t follow through or try to clarify most of my preliminary ideas about optional strategies and processes, as they appear in my head. It’s not that I don’t have all kind of ideas crossing my mind, I do, I just don’t really go too deep into them. I notice them, I might write down a short note just so I don’t forget it, but at the same time, I also push it aside quite fast and forget about it.

What I’ve learned over time is, that once we actually start working, I will very fast be flooded with completely new ideas coming straight up from the thing happening in the studio. Most of them, I couldn’t have predicted or anticipated. In order to be able to stay receptive and available to follow the better ones, I need an open space. One that hasn’t been cluttered with existing ideas, a declared road map or a possible destination. I need to have a certain lightness in decision making, one that doesn’t have to push against an already declared plan. That doesn’t have to announce a change of course from the one presented, before we actually engage with the process .

I need both the dancers and myself, to be in a state of mind, which is un burdened with pre existing ideas about the thing we’re making, so we can freely navigate the process with lightness, curiosity and a mind free from the weight of trying to imagine the end result.

There’s nothing more boring and un creative, than knowing how exactly what you’re making will turn out.

Anarchy

If I look at my work from an anthropological angle, as in, a process of thinking about and actively examining questions such as: Authority, optional models for groups organisation, governance modalities, political and social structures, economic models, resources management and so on,  the way I would define it then, would be something along these lines:

A commitment, through a choreographic practice, to the idea that it can be possible to have a society based on principles of self organization,  voluntary association and mutual aid.

Which, in some ways, is the short and simple definition of Anarchy as a social model.

Damage Control

The most damaging thing that happened to art and artists, was turning art works into commodity like products, and the artistic process into a payed job. Add to this the complexity that comes with public funding of some of the art forms, and what you get is a dysfunctional system who renders being an artist and art making, an extremely challenging endeavor.

Artists shifted from a shaman like role, high priesthood, oracles, prophets, mediators of spiritual content etc, into business entrepreneurs, producing products to be marketed and sold. The core essence of what art is and why societies, communities and individuals need it, has mutated through that transition in irreparable manners. It has taken artists and their work, hostages of a system which negates and cancel the specific context needed for art making to make sense, to do its thing, to be of value. And in the process, it has created a reality where the vast majority of what is considered art and those considered artist, have almost nothing to do with either.

One of the most harmful aspects of this shift, manifests clearly through the gradual emergence of what is best defined as ‘gatekeepers. The concept in which art and artists need to be curated, mediated, let in, selected, approved and so on, by specific people, which are not artists and who act as gatekeepers, is anti art. The presence of those ‘middlemen’, is a direct result of turning artworks into products. Naturally, the drive, interest, agendas and overall vision of the gatekeepers, has to do mostly with things which are foreign to the Art they are managing, thus creating a constant friction between what art is and needs, and how the art world is being managed. These gatekeepers, are carefully chosen by the system, who makes sure their primary allegiance is to the system who appointed them, rather than art, artists, and the public. The result is that most artists who are let in and pushed up, are services providers, rather than free art makers who are more often than not, labeled as trouble makers, crazy and so on.

In a way, it’s a reproduction of the general current political systems, in which politicians serve first a foremost, the interests of corporations, central banks and other unelected power groups, over those of the citizens they’re supposed to serve.

Artists and their art, exist best when they have direct access to their audience. When sharing the work, is part of the work. When the audience is an active player in choosing and engaging with art and artists.

The current art world is structured like the fast food industry. What we need, is less MacDonalds, and more chef owned restaurants. Less supermarkets chains, and more local farmers markets.

Art is nourishment. It needs to be seen, structured and treated as such.

Random thoughts

  • The Fourth Wall

The concept of the Fourth wall, together with the drawing surface (wall, paper, canvas etc) and the organisation of sound as music, are probably some of the most important inventions of humanity. Up there with the wheel.

Canceling the fourth wall, is the laziest performative strategy. Coming up with ways to reach the audience and share the work with them, whiteout penetrating their space, is one of the most challenging and rewarding aspects of performance work.

  • Maniérisme

The emergence of Maniérisme, is a great way to detect lack of artistic content.

Maniérisme (which in most cases is unaware of itself), places style above all other components of the art work, thus signaling there’s no need to bother looking any deeper, beyond the appearance of the thing. That’s why great artists keep shape shifting freely between styles, never bound to one way of addressing the artistic question, without loosing the clarity and coherence of their process. They place the question of style at the lowest possible position in the hierarchy of artistic elements to be managed and addressed. From the outside it may look as if they keep changing the way in which they work, but that is false. What they do, is simply concentrate on the core questions of art making, unbothered by which style emerges as a consequence (Picasso)

Performance wise, the opposite of maniérisme, is presence.

  • Presence

    Presence, in the context of dance, has to do with clarity of action. Clarity of action, is the result of accuracy of intention, which is mainly the result of an understanding of the dancing thing and the choreographic context in which it takes place.

  • Ego

The relentless demand of ego to have its needs satisfied, is the main enemy of arts and artists. It will make them accept, be part of, and do almost anything and nothing, as long as their ego was fed. What you crave, is rarely what you need.

  • Freedom

Artistic freedom isn’t to be found within a thing which declare itself free. Chaos isn’t freedom. Randomness isn’t freedom. Poor structure and craftsmanship aren’t freedom. Freedom isn’t a starting point nor something that can be granted. Artistic Freedom is reached through knowledge and understanding of the artistic thing. Freedom requires clarity of vision, an insight into the thing one is engaged with and the acceptance to embrace responsibility.

  • Looking

If dancers do no LOOK at each other while they do the dancing, they do not exist. No matter the strategy behind the ‘not looking’ (as in classical dance when the dance is set meticulously on the music, thus freeing the dancers to ‘be together’ through relating to the music alone, or in some performatives styles when rolling your eyes in a transe like mode, looking inwards etc), it always results in acute lack of presence, poor decision making and a tunnel vision, separating the dancers from the whole and limiting their perception and understanding of the choreographic thing.

The main reason why choreographers adopt and impose the ‘not looking’ mode on their dancers, is as old as humanity. It’s called - devide and conquer.

  • What it say it is / What it actually is.

The gap that sometimes exists between what a thing say and declare it is, how it describes and explain itself, and what it actually IS, is sometimes so big, it becomes a black hole. Swallowing and negating the ability or need to address it.

If X is bad and Y is good (yes that’s personal and relative and subjective) there’s more authenticity to be found in a thing that claims it’s X and delivers X, than in something which declares it’s Y and behaves as an X.

Authenticity is important.

  • Mass

A live performance, any live performance, leaves a certain mass on the performance space once it’s over. If you take the time to try and notice it, you’ll see it. Some performances leave a grain of sand, other a pebble, some a small rock and rare few, a solid mass which fills the entire space where the performance took place. Performances create an energetic residue which can be clearly observed and felt once they are over.

  • Musicality

All you need to know about a dance work, can be found in its treatment of musicality. All of its musicalities. The dancing musicality, the one of the overall choreography, the work’s timeline musicality, the dramaturgical musicality, that of the lights, the musicality of the sound/music timeline etc.

Musicality to dance is what character is to a person. It’s what taste is to food. What meaning is to words.

  • Art

    A thing is either Art, or it’s not. It can be bad art, unfinished, unsolved, immature art, or it can be good, great, genius art. But there’s a clear line separating the things which are art, and those who aren’t. Most art, is more a form of exercise in the use of artistic tools, than it is actual art.

  • Old fashioned

Artistic things feel old fashioned, not as a consequence of adopting old styles, but rather because of the lack of originality by their creator.

Art knows no time. The source for all art works since the dawn of time is the same one. No one discovers or invents new sources. What artists do, is to reconsider the strategies for taping into the source. Most artists, copy or recycle existing strategies, and therefore, produce work that lacks originality and feels old and recycled. That’s why a work of art can be thousands of years old, and still feel relevant, fresh and contemporary. What makes a work feel old, isn’t its chronological age, but the fact it’s based on the copying of artistic strategies, rather than the presence of an original one.

The ability to come up with original strategies (which doesn’t even mean new, but rather something that bares traces of uniqueness and authenticity) in order to connect with art’s source, is called talent.

  • Talent

There is no art without talent. Talent can’t be gained or learned. Talent is a form of sorcery, granted at birth.

Art without talent is the saddest thing.

Truth/Beauty/Love

In a world plunged deeply in the muddy waters of deceit, ugliness and fear, what we desperately need is truth, beauty and love.

What can be choreographed

Anything that is ‘happening’, can be choreographed.

Any type of dance, any situational event, any interaction, anything that moves, anything that is action based, every form of conscious ‘doing’ (and in some cases, even different types of unconscious, inanimate, artificial doing), any text and every form of talking can be choreographed. Sound can be choreographed too, it’s called music.

Choreography is the practice of organizing things which move (through time and space).

This sets choreography apart from the thing being choreographed. They are not the same thing, since they are produced and managed by different processes and tools.

That’s why dance, regardless of the genre, style, method etc, isn’t choreography. It can be choreographed, but it’s not choreography.

Just like running, even thought it’s the main activity happening while playing football, isn’t the game of football. And although one has to practice running if they wish to play football, running has eventually very little to do with football playing, the thing.

Most works defined as choreographies, are actually dances. Choreography as a practice, a craft, a field of knowledge and an art form, is absent in varied degrees, or is present in extremely simplistic forms (usually driven by the toxic type of authority which can only produce imitation and conformity), from the work of most ‘choreographers’.

What choreography offers, is deep insight into systems. It allows the reproduction and study of that which is all around us, both in the natural world, and in that of human beings (as in, social, political, economical systems and so on). It lets us engage artistically with the essence of systems of organisation, which is where the core of its revealing powers lie and through that, it serve as the doorway for spiritual experience and growth.

Method/Object/Artifact

Choreography, more than any other art form, entangles the method with the artifact. The artistic objects that choreography produces and shares, are eventually, its methods of creation being put forth.

When watching choreography, what you get to see primarily, is the method that was applied in order to create the work. Unlike visual arts, literature, poetry, or even the other real-time art forms like music, film or theater, in which the method can be easily erased from the final object created, hidden in ways that install a distance between the two, choreographic works can’t avoid exposing (wether intentionally or not) their creative method.

Almost to the point of arguing that choreography, is simply ‘creative method’ packaged and presented artistically.

There’s an inherent impossibility to hide the method in the context of a choreographic work. It’s the first thing that jumps to the eye, as well as the thing being contemplated by the analytical brain of the viewer (again, consciously or not).

There are different levels to this of course, and the readership of the viewer plays a big role, but in the end, a choreographic work, is creative methods being organized into a kinetic, immediate, live event, unfolding in real-time.

What ‘method’ means in the context of choreography (mostly as a result of the fact that the subject matter of choreography, is dancers, as in people, human beings) is first and foremost the way in which the choreographer/dancers relations and interactions are determined and carried out.

The models under which responsibility, creative ressources, decision making, power, etc are operating, pretty much determines the creative method being used, and eventually, they also become the primary material for the choreographic work (regardless of the creator intentions). No matter the story a choreographer is trying to tell, their ideas on esthetics, the themes they’re working with, the concepts at the heart of their process and so on, what will eventually emanate from the work stronger than any of the other layers of content and intentions, is the method with which it was made, which to a large extend, can be summed up as the type of model determining the choreographer/dancers relations.

Inspiration

Inspiration, when the term isn’t being reduced to describe mere copying or imitation of other artists or art works, certain periods, a specific genre etc, is actually a form of reversed engineering.

If one studies deeply the artistic process, no matter the medium, genre or style, one will eventually come upon certain truths related to art making, which in retrospect, will mark the work with traces of resemblance to other epochs and other works of art.

The resemblance, is a consequence, not a starting point. It’s never intentional.

It has to do with the fact all art making, by all artists, since the dawn of time, is basically a study into the same few elements. If you study well, you can only arrive, in your own way, to the same places others have arrived to. That is also why good art is timeless.

In that sense, Inspiration is more a form of confirmation. A sort of validation in the aftermath of the actual process and findings.

It will be reminiscent of a Caravaggio not because you were ‘inspired’ by it or because the Baroque is your favorite period in art’s history, but because you have studied light, situation, composition, clarity of expression, color, dramaturgy, rendering the physical metaphysical and so on. The resemblance emerging, will be more of an unexpected surprise rather than a premeditated work-plan and therefor, it will retain a sense of originality, rather than that of copying.

It’s more of a “oh, now I get it”, rather than a “Hmm, that’s nice, I’ll try to make something like this”.

On the other hand, Inspiration as a phenomena preceding and detached from a specific process, has more to do with the way certain works, or artists, have a way of opening an endless playfield for others.

A sort of a ‘promise land of potentials’.

Endless gratitude to the ones who opened those fields for me.

What Is Art

Ideas are not art.

Agendas, political or social, are not art.

Philosophy isn’t art.

Opinions are not art.

Concepts are not art.

Ideology isn’t art.

Even self expression, isn’t art.

What art is, is a doorway to the spiritual, manifested through craftsmanship.

Art serves as a conduit, for society, communities and the individual, for spiritual essence and growth.

The central weapon of art, its main tool, is beauty.

The current war on beauty, is a war on art, which in turn, is a war against the spiritual.

Art

Art is truth telling.

It’s of prophetic nature. Not in the sense of telling the future, but rather as a manifestation of truths.

Truth provokes in men one of the following reactions: inspiration, fear or enviousness.

Most ‘art’ isn’t art.

Looking With Attention

Choreographing is “looking with attention” without being concerned with the end result, as the choreographic thing, is a constantly flowing and evolving phenomena.

Being focused on the end result while choreographing, negates what choreography is.

Choreography isn’t about arriving. The notion of progress within a choreographic process, doesn’t lie in the resulting works being created. If the notion of ‘arriving’ emerges when choreographing, it usually means ‘looking’ wasn’t practiced with complete attention. ‘Looking with attention’, is the FIX which allows the FLOW that is movement, to happen in the first place.

Choreography is all but a permanent state. Therefore, there’s no possibility for a state of ‘arrival’ to be present. Ever.

All there is, is a constant movement of looking, listening and learning, without accumulation or fixation of past experiences, and without future ambitions taking the form of a pre-planed process aimed at a finite result/object.

The choreographic process, if looked at for what it is, is in service of nothing else but its own flow. The creator, has the role of facilitator. Enabler. Somewhat unconscious of its own activity, in the sense that there is no perpetuation of a self—of a "me" that is seeking to achieve an end.

That is of course an extremely difficult place to reach and maintain, as the realities of the field, the need to build and maintain a career, the economical aspects of financing and producing the work and the need to make a living as a choreographic artist, are all pushing in the opposite direction. Demanding results, predictable products, recognizable artifacts which are easy to reproduce (repertoire anyone?), catchy themes and concepts etc.

How can one reconcile these two opposing forces? Probably, by simply practicing the same state of ‘looking with attention’, and accepting that the question in itself, is all there is and that the only thing we can do about it, is  looking at it with attention.

Choreography/Managment

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.

Performance

Performance, in the context of dance, equals presence.

Presence is the result of accumulated input, rather than manufactured, deliberate output, and therefore, is inherently a passive occurrence. You don’t DO presence. You ARE present.

Looking, observing, hearing, listening, are the real tools of performance.

Free agency

Question: Why don’t you create material?

The long answer:

Choreographies are designed to be carried out by either free agents, or by puppets.

When free agency, as a core aspect determining the role dancers have within the choreographic thing, is absent, the result is puppets operating under the authority and command of centralized control.

The vast majority of the choreographic work being made, is of the second type, and therefore, bares almost no artistic value, while also being abusive, damaging and degrading for the dancers involved.

Since choreographic practices tend to be accurate reflections of the societies in which they operate, that is not surprising in the least.

The reasons to why it’s impossible to generate artistic value within a choreographic practice, without free agency for dancers being a starting point are multiple, but mainly, it has to do with the fact that choreographies, all of them, are basically platforms for ‘people doing things’.

If people are doing things on platforms in which the algorithme is set in a way so they have no say about what they are doing (or a very restricted one), then they are denied access to that which makes them people in the first place. Hence, they are a reduced form of people. And since people are the subject matter of choreography, reduced people make for reduced choreographies.

The short answer:

I’m a choreographer.

Creation

Creation, when working with people as your subject matter and main creative substance (which is the case when looking at the art of choreography), can not be about producing content. That seems too small, limited, finite, self indulgent and somewhat narcissistic.

So if creation is not about the production of content, it would seem it has more to do with the creation of conditions, which in turn, enable the emergence of ever evolving content.

Acts of Creation are measured in their ability to become, and then hold, a space in which content of all sorts, happens without being interfered upon or managed by the creator. The setting forth of that space, through the definition of sets of conditions, is the primordial act of creation, which once in place, renders the creator neutral regarding the emergence and happening of content.