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Field Note Choreography is a way of thinking. It is a way of gathering evidence, laying out the pieces, organizing the trail. Choreography is a way of seeing the world, the things that move against each other and then back into their own places. Choreography can happen in less than a second as a vision appears, then later in time as the vision is made real. Choreography is watching a person rise out of a chair and seeing in that action the awkward beauty, the purpose, the muscles at work. It is recognizing when someone needs to be told what to do and giving them directions. It is noticing when someone has the skills and talent and capacity and will to move forward, then allowing them the space to do so. Choreography is time-based, but the time shifts. Choreography is a medicine chest, a Torah scroll, an acupuncturist’s needle, a beat, a bell, a bullhorn. The choreographers I know are great talents but even greater thinkers. They have come to understand that learning is a verb. They can talk about personal discovery and collaborative process with compassion. They are an experimenting breed, practicing their craft and their growing methods all the time, engaging whoever is around, including their own kin. They comprehend action and make it real in thousands of variations. They do their work whether the world cares or not. Mostly it doesn’t. The way that choreographers organize minds, bodies, ideas, money, institutions , people, and their own lives untangles a natural process for practical use. Because we are very practical. We are also funny, sad, hard, hard-working, and very independent. We resemble cowboys and wrestlers in our feistiness, seamstresses in our ability to piece together unity and connection when it is needed. At some time in our lives we were very physical. We might still be. We have probably redefined what physical is and have made that awareness a source of deep pleasure or nuanced consternation. Choreographers have a curious relation to their bodies and to the bodies of the people they work with. Some focus purely on the drive to define and extend what the human body can do. Others seek to extend what the human body can say, some with quiet subtlety and some by juxtaposing movement with media, stories, light, sound. All exert imagination, active minds at work, and the recognition that we are born with a body that will teach being and beauty and that will let us admit to the ugly, profane, and impossible in our world. ...

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