Choreography is the science of human action.

Human action can be defined as a continuos engagement with choice.

Human creativity exists only in the presence of an unobstructed access to choice.

The fact that dancing is linked mostly to execution rather than personal creativity, is where the whole thing collapses in on itself.

(No, the ‘interpretation’ thing is not what is referred to here as creativity).

The fact that in the realm of pedagogical thinking and practice, technique precedes creativity while making choice irrelevant, is the root of the problem.

There is no choreography if there is no access to choice at the fundamental layer of the act of dancing.

First there must be choice, only then can there be creativity, dancing, or choreography.

Excerpt from ‘Story Water’

Music:

Rebecca Saunders: « Fury II » concerto for solo double bass and ensemble (2009), Ensemble Modern Frankfurt.

Choreography stage and lights: Emanuel Gat

Costumes: Thomas Bradley

Light direction: Guillaume Février

Dancers: Thomas Bradley, Robert Bridger, Péter Juhász, Michael Löhr, Emma Mouton, Eddie Oroyan, Genevieve Osborne, Karolina Szymura, Milena Twiehaus, Sara Wilhelmsson.

World premiere at La cour d’honneur du palais des papes, Festival d’Avignon 2018.

Filmed at tanzhaus nrw Düsseldorf December 5th 2019

https://blossom.primal.net/7f7af427e6067578bd4f488c59dfb1cd4c9889ec63d2176c484a49c93812a9d4.mov

Choreographies are not designed, they are grown.

Choreographies, if decentralized and not used as a limited tool for self expression, are self learning networks which evolve and grow organically over time.

Choreographic models, as they come into being through their real life manifestations, achieve escape velocity turning into autonomous forms of emergent intelligence, when the maker is no longer able to fully predict what they’ll do.

When the choreographic thing itself becomes an independent entity with internal problem solving capabilities and a distinct creative force (that to a certain extent is no longer attached to its maker), is when choreography starts doing its thing.

Movement (as in, human action) is information. It is data.

Dancers’ movements are an accumulation of singular real time signals, a feedback loop to be analyzed in order to adjust the choreographic thing through continuous iteration. When movements/actions are centrally generated and organized by one person and then used as second hand content to be executed by other people, choreography ceases to be.

When dancers dont have full access and control over the generation and use of their movements (or more broadly, their actions following autonomous decision making) the entire thing is muted, there is no signal, no feedback loop, there is nothing to observe, study and adjust, there is only the external apparence of choreography produced by a de facto tyrannical system.

Choreography is the process of laying the foundations and conditions, which facilitate voluntary collaboration leading to self organizing, emergent choreographic structures and events.

Choreography is a doorway into the truth of the human experience, in the same way that mathematics are the doorway into the truth of the physical reality of the universe. You can’t MAKE choreography just like you can’t MAKE mathematics. All you can do is study and apply it.

Selection and choice are not the same thing.

Choreography, has to offer access to choice, rather than the limited premise of selection.

Selection breads expediency, which regresses the entire system to a mangble medium where everybody has effective neutrality, whereas choice, implies a system which doesn't try to micromanage or control its own outcome.

Selection, is a form of manipulation, giving the apparence of choice, while actually limiting it in order to control the outcome.

Selection is the sly roundabout tool of centralized systems.

Choice, is the default strategic approach of decentralized, permission-less systems.

For this to happen, the choreographer has to accept what most makers are reluctant to even look at - The fact that until the ego is eclipsed by one's subservience to both the choreographic process and the dancers who use it, one cannot lead in a meaningful, moral and productive manner.

The most urgent challenge the choreographic art form needs to address today, is dismantling the psychic epidemic in the form of an invisible mass psychosis, which has taken hold of the collective unconsciousness of dancers, resulting in the loss of individual, autonomous reflection.

Fantastic:) see you in Dresden!

💫♥️

You absolutely did 😅💫💪🏽♥️

Choreography is a framework, an operating system. The way in which it is configured, will not only determine dancers’ actions, but it is also the core element governing the choreography’s capacity for value creation

In complex systems, initial conditions have outsized consequences.

Man made systems (which is what choreography is inherently) are either centralized or they are decentralized.

Central planning and Micro management of the choreographic thing, will produce simplistic results by default and therefore, limited value creation.

The delegation of decision making all the way down to the level of each individual dancer, allowing for agency and autonomy as dancers acknowledge and accept choreographic responsibility, is the best manner to achieve a functioning complex choreographic situation while maximizing the transformation of dancers’ actions into artistic value.

The second option, requires a total shift in the understanding of the choreographer’s role and what art making is when it comes to choreography.

The currency of choreography, is decision making. Wealth distribution in a choreographic sense, has to do with how the access to decision making is being managed and allocated.

What, how, why, when, where, in relation to what.

Choreography is a fantastic practice to engage with if you're ok with letting it do what it does, and a horrible one if what you're after is control.

Choreography making is acknowledging reality, not trying to design it.

Art happens in direct relation to scarcity.

The post modernist drive towards making everything art and everyone artists, was a premeditated act of diluting and devaluing art, emptying it from its core purpose, the consequences of which are becoming ever more present.