Dance curation as choreographic practice

Abstract

Dance curators (or programmers, as they are often called) have a significant impact on the dance field through their selection processes: elevating certain works, practices, and artists, while effectively excluding others. Through this, they have a considerable hand in shaping what kinds of dance pieces a local audience has access to, effectively writing dance history over time. But their working processes remain poorly understood, and there have been limited attempts to theorize their practice. This article begins with an exploration of the etymology of the term curator and the historical emergence of the curator in both the fine arts and dance. It then goes on to examine the role of the curator as mediator in two common models for dance presentation (the festival and the theater season) and explores two alternative curatorial models (the focus program at Brussels venue Beursschouwburg and the uncurated model of Amsterdam festival Come Together). Finally, it explores the practice of dance curation as a form of choreography itself. It concludes that contextualizing dance curation as a form of choreography could be an effective starting point for theorizing the practice, hopefully paving the way for further study.

Keywords

• Curation
• choreographic practice
• programmer
• mediation
• festival