Expanded Choreography: Anarchism Not Democracy
Expanded choreography challenges the traditional frameworks of dance by pushing beyond fixed forms, institutional authority, and singular definitions of what dance is or who gets to dance. Rather than simply broadening participation or promoting inclusivity in a democratic sense, expanded choreography aligns more closely with anarchism — a politics of decentralization, mutual respect, and the refusal of imposed hierarchies.
While democracy often implies majority rule, fixed procedures, and formal representation, anarchism emphasizes ongoing negotiation, fluidity, and the dismantling of power structures that enforce domination. This distinction is crucial for understanding the political potential of expanded choreography.
Emma Bigé’s analysis in Danser l’Anarchie shows how postmodern dance collectives such as the Judson Dance Theater and Contact Improvisation embody anarchist principles. These groups reject centralized leadership and institutional gatekeeping, instead cultivating collaborative creativity where authority is dispersed and participants co-create the rules and forms of engagement. This anarchist approach refuses to settle on a final, fixed definition of dance, embracing openness and multiplicity.
This political stance disrupts the dominant hierarchies in dance that privilege trained bodies, choreographers, and formal institutions. Expanded choreography exposes how these hierarchies exclude many forms of movement and many bodies from being recognized as legitimate dancers. But crucially, it does not simply replace one centralized authority with another; it insists on a continual process of decentralizing power and redistributing agency.
In this way, expanded choreography refuses the idea of dance as a product of majority rule or fixed democratic norms. Instead, it invites us to imagine dance as an ongoing, anarchic process — a shared practice where differences coexist without domination and where authority is always provisional and contested.
This anarchic model offers a powerful challenge not only to how dance is made and experienced, but to how we think about politics and community more broadly. It asks us to consider how collective life can be organized without hierarchy, how cooperation can emerge from difference without coercion, and how freedom can be realized in the ongoing refusal of domination.
In conclusion, expanded choreography’s provocation is not that “you cannot dance,” but that “you cannot be the only one dancing.” This is a call for collective becoming grounded in anarchism — a politics of openness, multiplicity, and shared agency that resists closure and domination in all their forms.
PETER 