Soft choreography

by Mette Ingvartsen I say soft because I do not want to say social. But what I really mean is another organization of performance that does not rely on a clear separation between performers and spectators, between stage area and auditorium, between encounter and constructed event. Soft is the opposite of hard choreography. Hard choreography means; a choreography that has been written down to the smallest detail without much space for deviance. performance that !nows how to run itself and that has the safe security of running whether or not the audience is there to witness it. It does not change when someone gets up and leaves, nor does it become longer because people want it to go on. It !eeps its autonomy, its ob"ect# hood and not much can sha!e it. It can be performed without people loo!ing at it and its writing does not change depending on whether there is someone loo!ing or not. $when these performances succeed they are often called masterpieces% Soft choreography on the other hand is a choreography that cannot e&ist without the presence of the audience. It is a performance that is carried out in relation to the specific desires of a specific group in a certain time. It is a ris!y performance that could might as well not happen. It is this fragility that as!s for a shared responsibility for the situation. 'ith this said it does not mean that nothing is planned or that nothing will ta!e place. (ather, the desire for soft choreography is to arrange the conditions for encounters to occur. )he softness of choreography is not only applied to human physical movement, it also applies to the organization of space, the organization of a group in space and of how this group behaves. )he softness has a persuasive character. It has a seductive undertone, not a a se&ual one, but the seduction of being part of a collective, sharing a certain time and space, in order to construct something together. )oday the idea of the collective body might be a utopian idea. n idea that our individualist society constantly attempts to disrupt by ma!ing any !ind of collective mobilization and resistance impossible. *ontrary to this tendency, soft choreography assembles a group for a short, but precious moment in time. )he softness of the space happens when the space is undivided. It happens when the circulation in the room is open, when people are free to organize themselves as they li!e. It is important that the space can change. )hat it does not only have one configuration, but that other potentials can be realized. )his means that people can change their activity without necessarily noticing that they pass from one state to another. )he softness of the mind happens when different modes of being, start to intermingle. 'hen critical reflection dissolves into a drifting sensation of pleasure and returns only to have become much sharper and clearer. 'hen a mental thought, becomes a movement or a tone. 'hen a tone turns into a melody and becomes an orated narrative or a heated debate. Interactive, collaborative, participatory are only some of the words, that in the past have been used for such a type of theater. +emocratic is another. nd even though the medium of dance has in the recent years been revisiting such concepts by reconstructing utopias from the past $,-.s and /-.s%, it.s time to give it another try. )o much hardness in the field of choreography $and in my wor!% ma!es it urgent to

thin! of other ways of being together in the theater.