This article originally published in Finnish Dance in Focus 2009 – 2010 Journal

We don’t call a dance spectator a moved one, although we have film watchers, novel readers and music listeners. Although dance art is primarily a kinaesthetic art, it is received audiovisually. Could 21st-century dance art really become a kinaesthetic art, and how could this happen? How would the nature of dance art then change? Does choreography have the potential to break through the audio-visual-linguistic reception which is at the core of Western art? I don’t believe that giving up the stage as we know it and removing the chairs from the auditorium, in other words returning to archaic dance tradition, suffices as an answer.

Contemporary choreographers have for a long time already been seeking a way out of traditional theatre venues, wanted to work with people who are not dance professionals, and make performances for an audience that is not comprised of traditional art-lovers. In recent years these kinds of untypical choreographic projects have begun to be called social choreography. Social choreography has been made and written about in Europe by e.g. Michael Klien, Kirsi Monni, Steve Valk and Jeffrey Gormly.

I want to continue the discussion on social choreography and at the same time open up the problem of audiovisuality in choreography with the help of two new concepts – “positive” and “negative” choreography. Positive and negative are not used here in the sense that one is better than the other – they are not evaluative qualifiers.

I call a dance work on the stage, which has defined boundaries in time and space, positive choreography. Positive choreography can be presented in theatres or on the streets, in industrial spaces or fields. It is made to be performed, watched and reviewed. Although it is not as concrete as a table or chair, it is an object or entity which generally has a name and in which the bodily-created movement lasts a certain period of time and is recognisable or perceivable.

Productisation defines the art work

The pressures of 21st-century economics are changing the nature of positive choreography from a work into a product. Financial demands speed up dance’s forced transformation into an audiovisual object. This object must be easily transferable from one continent to another within the logistics of culture management. Global traditional stages are the terminal of these performance production logistics.

Dance no longer attracts interest as a mere art work, but is increasingly evaluated as an interchangeable commodity and a possible marketing vehicle. I believe that in the future we will see even more how contemporary dance is used in branding and how dancers and choreographers will be branded.

With productisation the form of the choreography condenses because the content of a commodity that can be bought and sold must be clearly defined. The choreographies are marketed according to the publicity value of the maker. People are no longer attracted to a performance because of its artistic value but rather according to its publicity value. Publicity capital is needed more and more to interest funders and sponsors in works and makers.

Decentralising power sets new challenges

I call the independent counterforce to the reification of positive choreography negative choreography. Negative choreography can be compared to the work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude with respect to architecture. By wrapping up houses, bridges and rivers, they don’t try to attract the spectator’s gaze to the packet itself, but rather direct the attention onto something outwith the work they have created. When a building is in a packet, i.e. gone, it appears to the spectator in a new way. This is one idea of negative choreography: to direct the spectator’s attention onto something outwith itself and help the audience perceive things through their absence.

In negative choreography the work becomes a blind spot and at the same time its material aspect disappears. The work is a certain kind of magnifying glass or microscope, but is in no way a mere instrument. The task of negative choreography is to turn the spectator’s attention away from itself onto what it generates and gives birth to. The focus is not on the choreography as an object. Negative choreography has the same role as a midwife, middleman or bridge-builder. It leads the spectator to a place they would not otherwise find or see.

While in positive choreography the work is the central point, negative choreography is anonymous and deflects attention away from itself. Negative choreography is centrifugal, movement away from the centre. It widens, diverges and makes networks outwards. Positive choreography on the other hand is centripetal, movement towards the centre. This powerful centripetality paralyses works in their own separate universe and makes them buyable and sellable products.

Negative choreography strives to go beyond the traditional art field/ghetto in the sense that Pierre Bordieu described it in his book The Field of Cultural Production, and at the same time look for new financial backers for art. The social and health sectors for instance have not been enthusiastic about funding the production of art works in the past, but the possibilities created by negative choreography are opening up new ways of working. Negative choreography does not function outside the economy, but it has different funding targets than positive choreography. The decentralising power of negative choreography also challenges the art organisations that have been built according to the model of industrial production.

One example of negative choreography could be the week-long U.N.I. event in February 2009 that was conceived and built by the Finnish choreography collective Z-score and dramaturge Steve Valk, who works with Daghda Dance Company in Ireland. U.N.I. was a kind of living room that was open to everyone who happened to come by to sleep, listen to lectures, participate in discussions or watch dance. U.N.I.‘s choreography started to take shape as a result of networking and discussions that took place at the event and activities which continue to be triggered by the event.

One characteristic feature of negative choreography is that it can be received kinaesthetically, not only audiovisually. Not however in a way that the audience would receive the work by dancing themselves, but rather in that it generates agency, e.g. by bringing people together or activating and empowering them in other ways. Negative choreography is a kind of generator which changes relationships between people and their understanding of things.

Jaana Parviainen (PhD.) directs research centre for philosophy of sport, body and movement (Talfit) at the University of Tampere. She is currently researching the productisation of kinaesthetic experiences and the effects of the global economy on movement culture. In 2006 Parviainen published her book Meduusan liike (the Motion of Medusa), in which she ponders the meaning of kinaesthesia and movement from the perspective of technology, perception and knowledge. In the lectures she gave at the U.N.I. project, which was produced by Side Step Festival 2009 and Zodiak – Center for New Dance, she presented her concepts of “positive choreography” and “negative choreography”.