2 Minuten mit Professorin Dr. Susanne Foellmer

Conventionally, choreography is understood as the writing of movement or the creation of a dance piece. Recently, the term has expanded into fields other than the arts where the structured arrangement of movement is of relevance: in social and economic contexts such as work organization, and even in cell biology or organic chemistry.
In political contexts, choreography can serve as both practice- and analytical instrument, for instance, to create and to understand dynamics in settings of resistance: One the one hand, choreography is a means to orchestrate protests, for example in danced flash mobs. Also, it can serve as a tool to allow for rallies in times of prohibition of corporeal public assembly, such as in a pandemic. On the other hand, aspects of choreography can help to identify emerging power relations, in conflicting areas between protesters and state authorities as well as within social movements themselves. In this respect, the double mode of choreography as the organizing and commanding (of) movement is key.
Furthermore, choreography illuminates the connections of recent protests between the onsite public sphere and the online space of social media as another medium for voicing political concern. Choreography, then, also generates an aesthetic momentum in distributing social and political agendas.