March 2025
Towards an
Ethical Ecology of
Choreographic
Creation
In my choreographic practice, I strive to create activatable environments, living structures, open systems where performers are not mere executants, but co-creators. I often speak of co-construction, shifting scores, working ecologies. But even in the most fertile of shared spaces, ethical imbalances can emerge if they are not named.
Even in the most well-intentioned collaborative processes, an implicit power asymmetry often persists between choreographer and performer. The choreographer usually holds the structure, the funding, the artistic direction, and above all, the final responsibility for the project. Acknowledging this asymmetry isn’t about reinforcing it, it’s about creating the conditions to care for it.
I believe ethics, in this context, is not a fixed code or a list of rules. It’s a relational, ongoing practice. A dialogue in motion. A space of vigilance and adjustment. A commitment to cohabiting artistically without exploitation, erasure, or instrumentalization of the other.
1 . Intellectual Property and Recognition
Performers actively contribute to the making of the work. They improvise, imagine, articulate, and transform. Where does co-creation begin? How can it be made visible? Naming contributions, acknowledging sources, and sharing the narratives of creation becomes a gesture of fairness. This might take the form of explicit credits, dramaturgical acknowledgments, or dedicated space for performer voices in the project’s documentation.
2. Power Relations and Artistic Authority
Even as I aim for a horizontal structure, I still hold a position of artistic authority. This power must be assumed—but also **relationally engaged**. I seek to create contexts where disagreement is possible, where critique is welcomed, where listening is active. Creating together does not mean constant agreement. It means daring to enter friction within a supported frame.
3. Bodily Consent and Emotional Labor
The studio can become a space of intensity, vulnerability, exposure. Performers offer their bodies, their emotions—sometimes their fragilities. It is fundamental that this space remains negotiable. That everyone can say no, draw boundaries, adjust their engagement. This implies clarifying expectations, opening moments for dialogue, and integrating practices of care.
4. Time, Energy, and Financial Recognition
Creating a piece is not just about “being there” during rehearsal hours. It means dreaming the work, inhabiting it, feeding it outside the studio. When performers bring in ideas, test concepts, invest in dramaturgy or movement writing, this deserves clear recognition—including financial. It is my responsibility to code these contributions into the budget and into the structure of the work.
5. Access to Voice, Memory, and Transmission
Performers are often absent from the narratives that document dance works. I aspire to projects where the artists who move through them leave visible traces: quotes, collective journals, living archives. Where the memory of the work is polyphonic. Where the bodies that carried it can still speak of it in the present.