Answers 36–42

Jan Ritsema

about choreography

lets not be difficult about this
the basic condition seems to be:
choreography is thinking about the organisation of objects and subjects in time and space on stage

but this counts for theatre, music, visual arts and cinema too in some sense
and not only for them
this is also what happens in the street, the community organises movement in the communal time and space

would it be better to say:
thinking about the organisation of the movement between objects and subjects in time and space on stage

but this still counts for the arts mentioned above as well

then:
thinking about the organisation of the moving relations between objects and subjects in time and space on stage

that doesn't sound bad
but I exclude performances like Xavier Leroy's "Product of Circumstances" or Jerome Bel's "Jerome Bel"
they do not only organise moving relations between objects and subjects in time and space on stage
they also displace them, they unwrap movement
so the definition could be: thinking about the organisation and/or displacement of the moving relations between objects and subjects in time and space on stage

contemporary dance performances often have a circular way of organisation, contrary to a more classical organised presentation, which is often more linear, as a consequence of its narrative structure

let's improve the definition to: thinking about the circular or linear organisation and/or displacement of the moving relations between objects and subjects in time and space on stage

but still I miss an important element: the spectator
as there are many performances nowadays which not only deal with the movement relations that are organised in the limited space and time of the stage
but which are also dealing with the tangible and intangible movement relations between the performance and/or performers and the auditorium or spectators
I refer to Jerome Bel's "Le dernier spectacle" in which the main movement notification happens in the mind of the spectator

so the definition should be: thinking about the circular or linear organisation and/or explanation of the moving relations between objects and subjects in time and space on stage and/or the tangible or intangible movement relations between the performance and/or performers and the auditorium or spectators

but still all this does not cover the term, nor the way choreography has been practised
as in principle a choreographer does not organise time and space of what happens on stage but mainly of what happens in the minds of the beholders, the spectators
it is there where the choreography takes place, happens
but this is not specific to choreography
all arts finally try to trigger the mind of the spectators
but not all trigger movement relations in the mind of the spectator

and then about this "thinking" in the definition
this "thinking" is the most important task of a choreographer
s(h)e thinks about movement
about the many ways movement manifests itself
and (s)he thinks about what the motional aspects sh(e) uses trigger in the spectator

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Julia Wehren

Choreography today means a set of rules which organises body movement in time and space. Either pre-emptive – as instruction – or in the moment of creation itself, based on decisions. The set of rules – and through it, the organisation of body movement, time and space – can always change. But in every moment a certain setting is created, organised by the choreography.

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Superamas

I was reading a novel of Dashiell Hammett, "The Gutting of Couffignal".

(…)
"Stop!" I ordered.
"I shan't," she said, but she did, for the time at least. "I'm going out."
"You're going out when I take you."
I thought: Choreography is the art of giving orders.

She laughed, a pleasant laugh, low and confident.
"I'm going out before that," she insisted good-naturedly. I shook my head.
"How do you propose stopping me?" she asked.
"I don't think I'll have to," I told her. "You've too much sense to try to run while I'm holding a gun on you."
Choreography is the art of being obeyed: no drama, no psychological matters, only shapes and moves. Like for a military parade, you decide and off they go.

She laughed again, an amused ripple.
"I've got too much sense to stay," she corrected me. "Your crutch is broken and you're lame. You can't catch me by running after me then. You pretend you'll shoot me, but I don't believe you. You'd shoot me if I attacked you, of course, but I shan't do that. I shall simply walk out, and you know you won't shoot me for that. You'll wish you could, but you won't. You'll see."
Her face turned over her shoulder, her dark eyes twinkling at me, she took a step toward the door.
"Better not count on that!" I threatened.
The point is: how to grasp the reality which always escapes from our will and our understanding. Why this rather than that? Is choreography a means to be more objective? There is always a part of the "indeterminable", of the "not discernible" in things.

For answer to that she gave me a cooing laugh. And took another step.
"Stop, you idiot!" I bawled at her.
Her face laughed over her shoulder at me. She walked without haste to the door, her short skirt of gray flannel shaping itself to the calf of each gray wool-stockinged leg as its mate stepped foward.
Choreography is a projection. It is based on the gaze of the spectator.
It's the onlooker who decides if what he sees is not only what he sees but also a piece of art with choreographic qualities.

Sweat greased the gun in my hand.
When her right foot was on the doorsill, a little chuckling sound came from her throat.
"Adieu!" she said softly.
And I put a bullet in the calf of her left leg.
Here we are! One can easily take a part of reality and reframe it, and doing so in a specific context, can create a choreography.

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deufert+plischke

Answering the question "What is choreography?" we consciously would like to avoid common "word husks" which often flutter around the term like moths around the flame. Actually, there should be at least as many answers as there are, were, and will be artists who are using, formulating, inventing, changing, etc. the medium of choreography. Still, we would like to make a distinction between craft and art. They have nothing in common, but in the case of choreography they are often thrown into one pot together, and the one is always missed in the other. No one realises that both harbour different risks and therefore cannot be compared with each other.

In craft, technical refinement produces the risk of mastership and thus the danger of failure.

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Christine Gaigg

I make a distinction between choreography and choreographic craftsmanship. The craft is subject to fashions and styles. "Choreography", on the other hand, is a term as far-reaching as "gesture". As such, this term contains a lot (if not everything) and can stand for all kinds of things like, e.g., composition, orchestration, timing, score, structuring. Choreographing as an action means finding orientations within a sample of conditions. Those may be – but don't have to – dance movements. On the contrary, the relation to dance movement is just a tiny special case in the thought space of choreographing.

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Rudi Laermans

Two kinds of choreography? – These days, there exist at least two kinds of choreography … On the one hand, there is choreography as making representation machines by means of moving bodies that are always also meaningful representations of bodies. Representation machines reduce the dancing body to a tautological representation of itself (‘I dance that I dance') and primarily address the observer as a passive viewer with a mental eye. On the other hand, there is choreography as a multi-medial affect machine, consisting of various sorts of movement. Bodily movements are put within the same transversal plane as moving images and shifting sounds, moving objects and shifting beams of light … The observer is therefore no longer addressed as a bodiless viewer but as a material recipient. Within this new paradigm, dance remains ‘the art of the (moving) body', yet the body is re-articulated as the capacity to be moved by pre-personal affects.

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Claudia Bosse

choreography is writing in space. bodies scan time, rhythm, energy in space. choreography is the intentional collision of sediments in cultural and biographical memory with aesthetic, up-to-date processing in/with time, space, body. choreography produces situative temporal alignments of bodies and eyes, heads and bodies.

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