Expanded Choreographies – Choreographic Histories

Front matter

Anna Leon

Expanded Choreographies — Choreographic Histories

Trans-Historical Perspectives Beyond Dance and Human Bodies in Motion

Contents

List of Figures... inde PIER AR Le DO Pede 1 Acknowledgment: ssie eaea aa p E A N assé 15 Summary 9 2080 duree i abs ame sah a ILLI 19 Introduction, ..: 1 nn tete E EE E PU Lanta tea fe 21

Part 1: Before choreography, expansion

Qfballet:and'of dance... rss e Sine etr utr ORAS Weave 45 A:master of Order 4:54 25540 en ceeded e EU rade UMEN air Tete dents 51 The subject of ballet: 258 3: etre rrr e erre enr AREE S 57 COnClUSION aca io ero oro ar ed e I E EU 63 The:spacexof the dance: eorom x Rex PRAE SER hi nant 77 A:choreo=graphic logie: s eee ne nn ee Mn ee 92

BOT 210

Part 3: Expanded modernities

Of dancing in. a! ballet: «2. rennes ous uses Rer ERR tered decals 229 Of motionn the body 52e soude See ed cbse ov cata sees ERR does 235 ConclusiQm,. «i22 nes donnent sine hed ie 244 Managing Movement): Tm 266 CONCIUSIO Ne. set ser exten e Dao ee et Ee RE nn ane ode be dyes 274

Chapter 9: Creation, imagination, paradise: lettrism's excursions into choreography -..-..:« uite et Ro tin Re PR ts tales 271 Conclusion serre an e eo eet o oM ined en hd gen ae 304

List of Figures

Figure 1: First page of a notation in the Beauchamp-Feuillet system. Source: Feuillet, Raoul Auger: IX. Recueil de danses pour l'année 1711, Paris: Dezais 1711, http:// gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k8586968/f67.item# (August 2020), p. 72, BnF. 66

Figure 2: Representation of a step (here, a step forward in plié) in Feuillet notation. Source: Feuillet, Raoul Auger: Chorégraphie, ou LArt de décrire la danse par caractères, figures et signes démonstratifs, Paris: Brunet 1700, p. 11, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/1 2148/btv1b86232407/f1.image.r=feuillet%201700.langFR (August 2020), BnF. 67

Figure 3: A position of the foot drawn in terms of heel, ankle, and pointe in Feuillet notation. Source: Feuillet, Raoul Auger: Chorégraphie, ou LArt de décrire la danse par caractères, figures et signes démonstratifs, Paris: Brunet 1700, p. 6, http://galli ca.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b86232407/fi.image.r-feuillet?6201700.langFR (August 2020), BnF. 72

Figure 4: A bent arm, in Feuillet notation. Source: Feuillet, Raoul Auger: Chorégraphie, ou LArt de décrire la danse par caractères, figures et signes démonstratifs, Paris: Brunet 1700, p. 97, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b86232407/f1.image.r=fe uillet%201700.langFR (August 2020), BnF. 72

Figure 5: A tortillé step forward, backward, and sideward in Feuillet notation. Source: Feuillet, Raoul Auger: Chorégraphie, ou LArt de décrire la danse par caracteres, figures et signes démonstratifs, Paris: Brunet 1700, p. 10, http://gallica.bnf. fr/ark:/12148/btv1b86232407/f1.image.r-feuillet?6201700.langFR (August 2020), BnF. 75

Figure 6: Dancers depicted on an abstract spatial grid in Rameau's Le Maître à danser. Source: Rameau, Pierre: Le Maître à danser, Paris: Jean Villette 1725, plate 90, ht tp://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8623292z (August 2020), BnF. 78

Figure 7: Two pages from an anonymous collection of notations in the Beauchamp- Feuillet system, undated. Source: Universitát Salzburg, Derra de Moroda Dance Archives, DdM 6750. 79

Figure 8: Dancers depicted on a notation path in Kellom Tomlinsons The Art of Dancing Explained. Source: Tomlinson, Kellom: The Art of Dancing Explained, London 1735, plate BI. PV, Library of Congress, digital collection ‘An American Ballroom

Companion: Dance Instruction Manuals, ca. 1490 to 1920’, https://www.loc.gov/ item/20010870/ (August 2020). 82

Figure 9: Detail from a choreo-graphy. The dotted lines indicate a return upon a chemin already danced upon. Source: Feuillet, Raoul Auger: Recueil de dances contenant un très grand nombres des meilleures entrées de ballet de M. Pécour tant pour homme que pour femmes [sic] dont la plus grande partie ont été dancées à l'Opéra, Paris 1704, p. 2, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b85914682 (August 2020), BnF. 84

Figure 10: Detail from a choreo-graphy. Source: Gaudrau, Michel: Nouveau recueil de Dance de Bal et celle de Ballet contenant un très grand nombres [sic] des meilleures [sic] entrées de ballet, Paris 1715, p. 16, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8623 248j (October 2018), BnF. 85

Figure 11: Detail from a choreo-graphy. Source: Feuillet, Raoul Auger: Recueil de dances contenant un trés grand nombres des meilleures entrées de ballet de M. Pécour tant pour homme que pour femmes [sic] dont la plus grande partie ont été dancées à l'Opéra, Paris 1704, p. 2, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b85914682 (August 2020), BnF. 86

Figure 12: Detail from Le Maítre à danser. Source: Rameau, Pierre: Le Maítre à danser, Paris: Jean Villette 1725, plate 88, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8623292 z (August 2020), BnF. 88

Figure 13: Video still from Mathilde Chénin’s Prototype distance. A central point (head or neck) is connected to other body parts. Source: Chénin, Mathilde: Prototype distance, 2011 variable durations, http://www.mathildechenin.org/pr oto/prototype-distance/ (August 2020). 137

Figure 14: Video still from Mathilde Chénin’s Danse pour deux dans un escalier, un dimanche. The planes formed by the black lines represent the “liminal space" of each user, while the red lines represent the distance between the two users. Source: Chénin, Mathilde: Danse pour deux dans un escalier, un dimanche, Québec: La Chambre Blanche 2012, 01:47, http://www.mathildechenin.org/proto/danse -pour-deux-dans-un-escalier-un-dimanche/ (August 2020). 137

Figure 15: The dome of CLOb in construction. Photograph: Ouidade Soussi- Chiadmi and Pierre Friour. Source: Chénin, Mathilde: CLOb (Collective Large Object), undated, http://www.mathildechenin.org/clob/clob-collective-large-o bject/ (August 2020). 138

Figure 16: The completed dome of CLOb. Photograph: Ouidade Soussi-Chiadmi and Pierre Friour. Source: Chénin, Mathilde: CLOb (Collective Large Object), undated, http://www.mathildechenin.org/clob/clob-collective-large-object/ (August 2020). 139

Figure 17: Video still from Mathilde Chénin’s Danse pour deux dans un escalier, un dimanche. Source: Chénin, Mathilde: Danse pour deux dans un escalier, un dimanche,

List of Figures

Québec: La Chambre Blanche 2012, 01:47, http://www.mathildechenin.org/pr oto/danse-pour-deux-dans-un-escalier-un-dimanche/ (August 2020). 143 Figure 18: Video still from Mathilde Chénin’s Danse pour deux dans un escalier, un dimanche. Source: Chénin: Danse pour deux dans un escalier, un dimanche, Québec: La Chambre Blanche 2012, 01:47, http://www.mathildechenin.org/proto/dans e-pour-deux-dans-un-escalier-un-dimanche/ (August 2020). 143

Figure 19: Video still from Mathilde Chénin’s Danse pour deux dans la cuisine, petit déjeuner. Source: Chénin, Mathilde: Danse pour deux dans la cuisine, petit déjeuner, Québec: La Chambre Blanche 2012, 01:50, https://vimeo.com/39841965 (August 2020). 144

Figure 20: The main elements of the on-stage scenographic-technical setup of Solo a ciegas (con lagrimas azules). By the author based on production notes. 162

Figure 21: Film still from the video recording of Solo a ciegas (con lagrimas azules). Source: Mesa, Olga: Solo a ciegas (con lagrimas azules) [DVD], Cie. Olga Mesa / Association Hors Champ - Fuera de Campo 2008, 41:19. 180

Figure 22: Film still from the video recording of Solo a ciegas (con lagrimas azules). Source: Mesa Olga: Solo a ciegas (con lágrimas azules) [DVD] Cie. Olga Mesa / Association Hors Champ - Fuera de Campo 2008, 41:19. 183

Figure 23: Willows along the artificial canal are bent by being pulled by a metallic wire attached to a concrete pillar. The Books of Groningen. Project by Daniel Libeskind with William Forsythe, BOOK N(7): Dance/Mechanics/3pm/Streets/ Red Flame/Erato, William Forsythe. Photograph: Emma Villard. 189

Figure 24: Aerial view of William Forsythes marker showing the hedge crossing the canal. The Books of Groningen. Project by Daniel Libeskind with William Forsythe, BOOK N(7) Dance/Mechanics/3pm/Streets/Red Flame/ Erato, William Forsythe. Source: Google Maps, 2020, May 29. Ruischerbrug, Scale: 50m. Google Maps [online] (Retrieved 29.05.2020). 189

Figure 25: Trees with different curves. The Books of Groningen Project by Daniel Libeskind with William Forsythe, BOOK N(7): Dance/Mechanics/3pm/Streets/ Red Flame/Erato, William Forsythe. Photograph: Emma Villard. 200

Figure 26: Tree pulled by a double wire. The Books of Groningen. Project by Daniel Libeskind with William Forsythe, BOOK N(7): Dance/Mechanics/3pm/Streets/ Red Flame/Erato, William Forsythe. Photograph: Emma Villard. 201

Figure 27: Tree curving sideways. The Books of Groningen. Project by Daniel Libeskind with William Forsythe, BOOK N(7): Dance/Mechanics/3pm/Streets/Red Flame/Erato, William Forsythe. Photograph: Emma Villard. 202

Figure 28: Detail of Labanotation of the action of opening a box, for Mars Bars. Anonymous, MARS BARS - Box opening, 1942. Image source: Special Collections, Leeds University Library, BC MS 20c Theatre/Hodgson/1/1/151. http s://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/419984. Reproduced with the permission © Laban Estate. 250

Figure 29: A photograph showing the lightlines from folding a tea towel, 1952 (L/F/3/19). From the Rudolf Laban Archive, University of Surrey, © University of Surrey. 261

Figure 30: Industrial Rhythm chart by Rudolf Laban, 1944 (L/E/72/6). From the Rudolf Laban Archive, University of Surrey, © University of Surrey. 272

Figure 31: Detail from Sabatier’s Omega 3. Source: Sabatier, Roland: Omega 3, Paris: Editions Lettrisme et hypergraphie 1966, unpaginated. 290

Figure 32: Detail from Lemaitre’s Prose hypergraphique gesticulaire. Source: Lemaitre, Maurice: Chorées surprenantes, in: Lettrisme 4 (1965), p. 22, Courtesy of the Bismuth Lemaitre Endowment Fund. 291

Figure 33: Detail from Sabatier’s Omega 3. Source: Sabatier, Roland: Omega 3, Paris: Editions Lettrisme et hypergraphie 1966, unpaginated. 294

Figure 34: Detail from Maurice Lemaitre’s Chorées surprenantes. Source: Lemaitre, Maurice: Chorées surprenantes, in: Lettrisme 4 (1965), p. 5, Courtesy of the Bismuth Lemaitre Endowment Fund. 294

Figure 35: Ballet to be completed by viewers, by Maurice Lemaitre. Source: Lemaitre, Maurice: La Danse, le mime et l'art corporel d'avant-garde, Paris: Centre Centre de créativité 1982, p. 91, Courtesy of the Bismuth Lemaitre Endowment Fund. 302

Acknowledgments

My sincerest thanks go to:

Nicole Haitzinger, for being positive, supportive, present, and engaged beyond what I could have hoped -— and for guiding me towards the primacy of primary sources.

Gendup (the University of Salzburg centre for Gender Studies) and the Marie Andessner Stipendium committee; the NEON foundation (Greece); and the Leventis foundation (Switzerland / Cyprus) for financially supporting different phases of this research. The FWF (Austrian Science Fund) for financially supporting its publication.

Dik Breunis, Mathilde Chénin, Emilia Gasiorek, Diana Lourens, Olga Mesa, Jan Pestoor, Julian Richter, Christopher Roman, Gus Solomons, Jr., Peter Stamer, and André Tervoort for taking the time to answer my questions.

The employees of the Archives of the Ballets Suédois, Dansmuseet (Stockholm, Sweden); the Bibliothéque nationale de France (Paris, France); the Centre national de la danse (Pantin, France); the archive of the Municipality of Groningen (Netherlands); the Laban Archive at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance (London, United Kingdom); the Rudolf Laban Archive at the University of Surrey (United Kingdom); the Special Collections of Leeds University Library (United Kingdom); the Bibliothéque Kandinsky (Paris, France), and the Derra de Moroda Dance Archive at the University of Salzburg (Austria), for their patience and help.

The anonymous reviewer of this book’s manuscript for their comments, and Rebecca Hendershott for bearing with the manuscript (and me).

My students, for their positive energy that counterbalanced difficult moments of writing, and for teaching me how to learn.

My mother, for introducing dance - even though it was not expanded choreography — into my life.

Emma, who made me happy while I was writing this text — and beyond.

Notes on translation

All quotations are given in the language of the source used. While this has largely been the original language (or a published translation juxtaposed to the original language), some sources are quoted in translation if that was the researched source used.

All quotations that are not in English are followed by a translation by the author. The treatises by Domenico da Piacenza, Guglielmo Ebreo da Persaro, and Antonio Cornazano constitute an exception, as published translations have been used (see Bibliography); deviations from these translations are indicated in the footnotes.

Given the complexity of artistic, poetic, and context-bound connotations that may be inherent in them, titles of artworks are not translated. Titles of books and other written material, when mentioned in the text, are translated literally — this is done to facilitate the reader, even if such literal translations do not always do justice to the works.

Quotations integrate — as much as text formatting allows - the orthographic and typographic particularities of the material quoted.

Summary

From the staging of objects to motions in urban space, dance scholarship increasingly recognises choreographic expansions beyond dance-making and the moving human body. Additionally, the history of choreography encompasses practices ranging from notation to dramaturgy and composition. Against this background, this book activates the term “expanded choreography” to explore bidirectional relations between contemporary and historical instances of choreography not complying with a corporeal, kinetic, or dancerly focus.

This book juxtaposes nine case studies illustrating common problematics in different periods of European dance history: treatises predating the early-18* century, when the use of the term “choreography” was not synonymous with

“dance-making’; practices from 20%

-century modernity, when the relation between choreography, dance, and bodily movement was essentialised; and contemporary works surrounding the appearance of the term “expanded choreography”. In order to address relations between these periods, methodological tools from Dance Studies — Christina Thurner’s “spatialised” dance history model — and Art History — Mieke Bal's “preposterous history" and Hal Foster's treatment of the parallax - are used.

Based on the above analyses, Expanded choreographies - Choreographic histories presents expanded choreography as a field of diverse qualitative transformations of choreography, not limited to the transfer of physical-kinetic knowledge and practice to domains beyond dance. In parallel, it argues for the decentralisation of a dominant, historically-recent choreographic model based on dance-making, motion, and human corporeality in reading early-modern sources; and for the need to replace a discourse of corporeal/kinetic modernism in 20°"

-century choreography by admitting its multiplicity and including more diverse paradigms in its canon. In doing so, the book identifies the relevance of contemporary choreographic expansions for understanding historical practices — and vice versa - thus foregrounding the inscription of expanded choreography in a macro-historical framework. Viewing expansion as a territory in which the semantic scope of choreography can shift, it pleads for the necessity of recognising choreographic plurality, with different conceptions of choreography forming - both in contemporaneity and in history — a constellation of multiple specificities.

2012. The Fundacié Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona hosted choreographer Xavier Le Roy’s “Rétrospective”, a performed exhibition. In parallel with the exhibition, and in collaboration with Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and Mercat de les Flors, a conference was organised: Expanded Choreography. Situations, Movements, Objects, with the following description:

In the last few years the term “choreography” has been used in an ever-expanding sense, becoming synonymous with specific structures and strategies disconnected from subjectivist bodily expression, style and representation. [...] Choreography is today emancipating itself from dance, engaging in a vibrant process of articulation. [..] Simultaneously, we have seen a number of exhibitions in which choreography is often placed in a tension between movement, situation and objects."

A few months later, artist and writer Marten Spangberg (who had also collaborated in the MACBA conference) published in Spangbergianism:

An expanded choreography owns the future. [...] The future belongs to choreography but only if it acknowledges its potentiality as an expanded capacity. Choreography is not the art of making dances (a directional set of tools), it is a generic set of capacities to be applied to any kind of production, analysis or organization.”

The term “expanded choreography” had been circulating for at least a few years before this exhibition and publication, in the most unexpected discursive contexts - ranging from a 2006 text on ethnographic approaches to education (noting that

1 Expanded Choreography. Situations, Movements, Objects. Conference presentation, MACBA 2012, http://www.macba.cat/en/expanded-choreography-situations (August 2020).

2 Spangberg, Marten: Seventeen Points for The Future of Dance, 2012, https ://spangbergiani sm.wordpress.com/tag/choreography/ (August 2020).

it ‘will have to include an expanded choreography of participatory stances”) to a rather surprising type of business-processing model implicating ‘an algorithm for expanding choreographies’.*

Expanded choreography is an elusive notion. There is no single, organised, expanded choreographic movement — no body of theorists or practitioners who claim a conceptual/artistic territory. There is no full consensus about the meaning of the term, and how one answers the question of what expanded choreography is indicates and reflects their view of choreography tout court. If choreography is related to a disciplinary arrangement of bodily motion, expanded choreography can be practiced by military officials and gender norms; if choreography is related to patterns of motion, expanded choreography can appear in the development of a fractal; if choreography is directed towards dancing bodies, expanded choreography can encompass the dance of non-human materialities. Moreover, as is the case with further widely-debated terms - “non dance", “conceptual” dance, *post-dance^ — the very construction of the expression “expanded choreography” subjects it to criticism; the adjective *expanded" implies both a core from which expansion occurs (raising the question of what that core may be) and the potentiality of limitless widening, where everything becomes (expanded) choreography, emptying the term of meaning. But despite such issues, expanded choreography has benefited from relatively wider acceptance than other terms - most notably, it has been used by practitioners, including Mette Ingvartsen, Dragana Bulut, Dalija Acin, and Spángberg. Thus — in contrast to artists’ resistance to terms

3 Powell, Kimberly: Inside-Out and Outside-In: Participant Observation in Taiko Drumming, in: Spindler, George & Hammond, Lorie A. (eds.): Innovations in Educational Ethnography: Theories, Methods, and Results, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum 2006, p. 62.

4 Decker, Gero: Process Choreographies in Service-oriented Environments, MA thesis, Potsdam: Universität Potsdam 2006, p. 41. In parallel, “Choreography”tself had been metaphorically activated in discourse about fields ranging from digital technology to biology: Parker, Philip M. (ed.): Choreography: Webster's Timeline History 1710-2007, California: ICON Group 2009, pp. 35, 38, 43, 45, 47.

5 On these terms cf. Adolphe, Jean-Marc & Mayen, Gérard: La ‘non-danse’ danse encore, 2004, http://sarma.be/docs/784 (August 2020); Roy, Xavier Le & Cvejié, Bojana: To End with Judgment by Way of Clarification, in: Lepecki, André (ed.): Dance, London/Cambridge: Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press 2012 [2005], pp. 93-95; Andersson, Danjel, Edvardsen, Mette & Spangberg, Marten (eds.): Post-Dance, Stockholm: MDT 2017.

6 Ingvartsen, Mette: Expanded Choreography: Shifting the Agency of Movement in The Artificial Nature Project and 69 Positions, PhD thesis, Lund: Lund University 2016; Bulut, Dragana & Linder, Adam: Mit dem Kórper schreiben / Writing with the Body, in: Jahresring 61 (2014), p. 178; Acin, Dalija: Exercise Book for Choreography of Attention ‘Point of no Return’, undated, http://dalijaacinthelander.net/eng/work_exercise.html (October 2018); Spangberg: Seventeen Points for The Future of Dance.

such as “conceptual” dance - it persists, presenting the historian and theorist with a phenomenon to be addressed.

This book is not an attempt to pinpoint - to define, to stabilise - expanded choreography. Rather, in this lack of clear definition, this book multiplies conceptions of choreography. In this sense, expanded choreography may be seen as an encapsulation of the contemporary choreographic field’s open-ness to re-definitions of choreography - what Bojana Cvejié has called ‘concept ouvert de chorégraphie [open concept of choreography]" - not only widening already-existing notions but also asking what else? choreography can do, what else it can work with, what else it may be. To be sure, other terms could have played the same role. *Expanded choreography" has, however, the advantage of avoiding dichotomous negations - as in the binarity of “not-dance” - replacing them with an opening of potentials. This avoidance of a negative definition reflects and coincides with a wider theoretical and practical interest in choreography "itself", beyond its dance-making capacity. For example, in 2012, Elena Basteri, Elisa Ricci, and Emanuele Guidi developed a project titled Rehearsing Collectivity: Choreography Beyond Dance.? In 2008 — four years before the MACBA conference - the journal Performance Research published an issue ‘On Choreography’ edited by André Lepecki and Ric Allsopp. A year before that, the research-oriented website CORPUS surveyed dance professionals on "What does “choreography” mean today?';? rather than converging on a single answer, the responses pointed towards multiplicity, or expansion.

It is not only in the present that this choreographic multiplicity can be discerned; it is also found in choreographic history. It is important to remember, in effect, that it was only from the 19? or even early-20" century that the main meaning of “choreography” came to be associated with the act of composing a dance." Similarly, it was chiefly in the 20" century that dance-making - and by

7 Quoted in Knolle, Vera: Du Visqueux au concept, avec retour possible. Plaidoyer pour une ‘dance (post)-conceptuelle’, in: Cvejić, Bojana (ed.): “Rétrospective” par Xavier Le Roy, Dijon: Les Presses du réel 2014, p. 300.

8 The reoccurring question of “what else" is inspired by William Forsythe's interrogation, ‘What else, besides the body, could physical thinking look like”. Forsythe, William: Choreographic Objects, undated, http://www.williamforsythe.de/essay.html (August 2020). See also Manning, Erin: Choreography as Mobile Architecture, in: Performance Paradigm 9 (2013), http://www.performanceparadigm.net/index.php/journal/article/view/134/133 (August 2020).

9 Basteri, Elena, Guidi, Emauele & Ricci, Elisa (eds.) : Rehearsing Collectivity : Choreography Beyond Dance, Berlin : Argobooks 2012.

10 CORPUS: Survey What does “choreography” mean today?, 2007, http://www.corpusweb.ne t/introduction-to-the-survey.html (Archive copy from October 2015).

11 Cf. Foster, Susan Leigh: Choreographing Empathy. Kinesthesia in Performance, Oxon/New York: Routledge 2011, pp. 40, 43; Moal, Philippe Le: Chorégraphe, in: Moal, Philippe Le (ed.): Dictionnaire de la danse, Paris: Larousse 1999, p. 543 on the derivative “chorégraphe” [choreographer];

extension choreography - became essentially bound to a moving human corporeality.” The related definition of choreography as an organisation or arrangement of moving bodies in time and space — based on its association with the medium of corporeal movement, irrespective of the adherence to a norm of dance - is also historically situated in the 20? century. These points call attention to the historiographic fact that choreography as the arrangement of moving bodies in time and space can be dissociated from choreography as dance-making - and vice versa, choreography can be practiced as dance-making while not engaging with human bodies in motion. But, more crucial still is that the term “choreography” itself first appeared with an altogether different meaning, in the title of French dance master Raoul Auger Feuillet’s 1700 treatise Chorégraphie, ou LArt de décrire la dance par caractères, figures et signes démonstratifs [Choreography or The art of describing dance through characters, figures and demonstrative signs]. Within Feuillet’s treatise, its context, and for the following several decades, “choreography” literally signified the writing of dance, i.e. dance notation, while dance-making was practiced without the label “choreography”. Beyond a definition that renders choreography coextensive with a history of dance-making or the arrangement of bodily motion, therefore, even a cursory glance into choreographic history shows that these are only chronologically-situated parts to a more complex story."

While historical accounts of choreography often focus on the passage from its function of writing to that of dance-making, these meanings of choreography are not exhaustive. Chronologically situated in the very “transition” from the early-18'^ century's choreography-as-writing to the 19" and 20% centuries’ choreography-as-dance-making, Edward Nye has argued that, in the 18"*-century theatricallyoriented genre of the ballet d'action, *choreography" acquired the meaning of *dramaturgical structure" or “dramatic composition" and “choreographer” was used as

“composer of the dramatic action”.® For example, he provides an excerpt from

Brandstetter, Gabriele : Choreographie, in : Fischer-Lichte, Erika, Kolesch, Doris & Warstat, Matthias (eds.) : Metzler Lexikon Theatertheorie, Stuttgart/Weimar : J.B. Metzler 2014, p. 54.

12 Cf. Foster, Choreographing Empathy, p. 44; Lepecki, André: Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement, Oxon/New York: Routledge 2006, pp. 3-4.

13 Thetaskofelaborating a choreographic history — overlapping but not identical with a history of dance — has indeed started to occupy the field of Dance Studies. Cf. Foster: Choreographing Empathy, pp. 15—72; Klein, Gabriele: Essay, in: Klein, Gabriele (ed.) Choreografischer Baukasten. Das Buch, Bielefeld: transcript 2015, pp. 17-49.

14 For more information on points made in this paragraph see Leon, Anna: Between and within choreographies: An early choreographic object by William Forsythe, in: Dance Articulated special Issue Choreography Now, 6:1 (2020), pp. 64-88.

15 Nye, Edward: ‘Choreography’ is Narrative: The Programmes of the Eighteenth-Century Ballet d'Action, in: Dance Research 26/1 (2008), pp. 42—59, esp. pp. 42, 46, 48. Similarly, Susan Foster enumerates that, according to Noverre, elements ensuring the plot — including choosing the subject of a ballet, structuring its scenes, directing dancers' actions — were crucial elements a 1770 ballet d'action review to suggest that “choreography” may refer to the dramaturgical development of danced drama:

Mlle Allard plays the part of Medea, Dlle Guimard Creusa, and Sr Vestris plays Jason. The latter is without a mask, and surprised the audience by the energy of his performance, not only as a dancer, but also as an actor. He gives his character all the sublimity than one could wish for. The passions are painted on his face with a nobility, a truth, a diversity that is inexpressible, and which shows he has a singular talent for the stage. [..] Mlle Allard, for her part, has a vigorous spring [une vigueur de jarret], has hard and fiery eyes which characterise quite well the fury of a jealous woman, and the depravity governing every movement of Mlle Guimard's indicates the extent of her desire to please and to seduce. This choreography [chorégraphie] was devised [imaginée dans le principe] by Noverre, the man who has greatest genius in this genre.'ó

Thus, although Jean-Georges Noverre referred to choreography as notation — as did Gasparo Angiolini and many of their contemporaries" — choreography may have been a far more complex notion in their context.” Still more meanings of

*choreography" might need to be added to these; Susan Foster, for instance, also identifies certain 19?-century uses of “choreography” referring to the teaching and learning of dance.”

of choreographic work, and presents the work of choreographers in the 18*^ century as both the staging of the ballet's story and its adaptation for a published programme: Foster, Susan Leigh: Choreography and Narrative: Ballet's Staging of Story and Desire, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1998 [1996], pp. 75, 101-102.

Nye : ‘Choreography’ is Narrative, p. 45, translation by Nye; see p. 46 for his interpretation of the quote. Nye takes his argument a step further, suggesting that “choreography” may also have referred to the written ballet programme — a libretto-like document describing the danced narrative's plot. Nye, Edward : Mime, Music and Drama on the Eighteenth-Century Stage : The Ballet d'Action, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, pp. 168—169. This aspect of choreographic history may have contributed to a persistence of narrative in (ballet) choreography, at least in France, for more than a century [Chapter 7].

Noverre, Jean-Georges : Lettres sur la danse et sur les ballets, Lyon: Delaroche 1760, https ://gall ica.bnf.fr/ark :/12148/bpt6k108204h/f1.item.textel mage.zoom (August 2020) BnF, pp. 2, 362; Dahms, Sibylle: Choreographische Aspekte im Werk Jean-Georges Noverres und Gasparo Angiolinis, in: Klein, Michael (ed.): Tanzforschung Jahrbuch 2 (1991), pp. 93-94, 108-109. Slightly later, in the early-19'^ century, Jean Faget also spoke of choreography as ‘this art not only of notating the steps and figures of the dance, simple technical expressions, but of putting into action all the riches of pantomime, of composing for this mute language a story, a plot, an intrigue, a knot and an ending’. Quoted in Foster: Choreography and Narrative, p. 167.

Foster: Choreographing Empathy, p. 43, p. 226 note 56.

“Choreography” may then refer to an engagement with dance-making (whatever the dance product may be), or with the human body in motion, or both at the same time; it may also refer to practices, like notation, that cannot be subsumed under these definitions. Inversely, practices relevant to dance-making and arrangements of corporeal motions are parts of choreographic history without always being defined as “choreography” in their particular context. From dance-making to dance notation, from arrangements of moving bodies to composition, from the development of danced drama to practices that are choreographic without being called choreographies, a constellation of transformations points to the fact that choreography is better conceptualised as choreographies — not reducible to a singular meaning or practice but, rather, a network of historically-situated ones.

This plural choreographic history is not linear or sequential,”° composed of a series of discrete paradigms replacing one another. Rather, different construals of choreography synchronously coexist; and, instead of pursuing a unidirectional chronology, they reappear at different historical moments, transforming in response to their diverse contexts. For example, choreography as a notational project re-emerges in the writings of modern dance artist Rudolf Laban [Chapter 8]; as kinetography, it integrates the 20% century's focus on movement in the conception of choreography as writing:

choreography, means literally the designing or writing of circles. The word is still in use today: we call the planning and composition of a ballet or a dance “choreography”. For centuries the word has been employed to designate the drawings of figures and symbols of movements which dance composers, or choreographers, jotted down as an aid to memory [...] My study of some hundred different forms of graphic presentation of characters of the different alphabets and other symbols, including those of music and dance, has helped me with the development of a new form of choreography which | called “kinetography”. ?

Choreography as notation — a writing that (pre)scribes the future performance of motion - has been employed more recently as well. Lepecki,” for instance, refers to Thoinot Arbeau’s 1589 treatise Orchésographie — which also includes notations

20 For a criticism of a singular-, linear-, chronologically-organised history see Thurner, Christina: Raum fiir bewegliche Geschichtsschreibung. Zur Einleitung, in: Thurner, Christina & Wehren, Julia (eds.): Original und Revival: Geschichts-Schreibung im Tanz, Zurich: Chronos 2010, esp. p. 10 and Thurner, Christina: Time Layers, Time Leaps, Time Loss: Methodologies of Dance Historiography, in: Franko, Mark (ed.) : The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Reenactment, New York: Oxford University Press 2017, pp. 525-532.

21 Laban, Rudolf: Choreutics, London: MacDonald and Evans 1966, p. viii.

22 Lepecki, André: Choreography as Apparatus of Capture, in: TDR-The Drama Review 51/2 (2007), pp. 120-123; cf. also Siegmund, Gerald: Choreographie und Gesetz: Zur Notand whose title prefigures Feuillet’s term — in his theorisation of choreography as a practice of disciplining, ruling the body and/or dance - an ‘apparatus of capture’, the law according to which the dancing body should move. In this way, the historical association of choreography with a notational project contributes to a contemporary conceptual link between choreography and the disciplinary control of the embodied praxis of dance.

Moreover, different construals of choreography engage in frictions with the practices they are surrounded by and which they aim to describe. For example, while Feuillet's (pre)scriptive notational project was consistent and contextually associated with the aim to centralise power over dance matters (institutionalised through the foundation of the Académie Royale de Danse), it may also have offered a possibility of resistance to the control of dancing bodies [Chapter 2].? Similarly, the 20? century's focus on bodily motion as the primary characteristic of both dance and choreography was defied by scenographic, musical, and textual inputs in multimedia choreographic work; or by the dephysicalisation of movement through its technological mediation. Choreography may also allow positioning with respect to specific kinds of practice, privileging some over others. Thus, in the 19" century, August Bournonville argued that ‘the choreographer who only composes according to a given programme is no more advanced than the mu-