*I just realised that I hadn’t published this, sorry*

PRESENTATION

Soft Choreography and its relationship to audience

In the core reading, Mette Ingvartsen states:
‘… a soft choreography is one that cannot exist without an audience. It is a performance carried out in relation to the specific desires of a specific group of people at a certain time… It is a fragile situation that asks the audience to share the responsibility for it. That said, it does not follow that nothing is planned or that nothing will take place. Rather, the desire in soft choreography is to arrange conditions for encounters to occur.’

In that paragraph, the term ‘soft choreograph’ is mentioned twice whereas reference to a body of people engaging in the piece is brought up three times.
So this led me to the question of
‘How does an audience experience soft choreography throughout multiple formats?’

Starting with an account of Ingvartsen herself, when interviewed by ‘Choreography’ magazine in 2016, she stated;

‘In most of the performances (69 Positions) people do step into action in the piece, which blurs the border between being a spectator and a performer. Some spectators dance, some enter into sexual positions with me while I’m naked and they are dressed and some even agree to perform an orgasm choir in front of the entire audience. I have a feeling that this form of direct participation becomes possible due to the softness of the encounter. It might also happen because the entire piece actually deals with how participation is not just something you do, but also something you negotiate whether you want to do or not. Participation happens also in the way people position themselves within the space, the closeness or the distance they take to what is presented, the gaze and the social control that takes place in the room.’

Softness
= comfort, mutual respect, breaking down of social norms
+ art is to be watched, not touched
+ social conventions for locations, e.g. theatres

Examples
These are some examples that I’ve hypothesised, and many only have elements that are emblematic of soft choreography.

– Live theatre/performance art
+ Ingvartsen’s work

– Concerts
+ when they point the mic at the audience and hope they continue the lyric, chosen participation and respect between both parties

– Cinema
+ Shrek 4D; air gushes up the legs like spiders, spray of water at your face for a sneeze, immersive experience that deviates from the norm cinema viewing. You may not be engaging with people, but you’re engaging with the film through the physical elements.
(The softness of choreography applies not only to human physical movement, but also to the organisation of space, the organisation of a group in space and of its behaviour)

– Art
+ Lego House, Denmark; no human presence, but soft choreography is within the space and the relationship to the object of Lego.

– Interactive theatre
+ Punchdrunk (‘Punchdrunk International trailer for Sleep No More Shanghai’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o5qw_sngP0)

My Unsuccessful Experiment

Fire fire
Warm me here
Never dare
Disappear
If you go
You’ll never know
How I love you so