Developing Creative Cities: A Sociochoreology Approach

Developing Creative Cities: A Sociochoreology Approach

Regina Miranda, MS, CMA, Director of Arts & Culture - Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement

Studies; President and CEO - Creative City/ Cultural Transformations

Time has now come to build a coherent new paradigm. This would be one in which society’s different actors together

mold paths of human development that are sensitive to all the cultural issues and fully recognize them as such.

UNESCO, Our Creative Diversity

Every human being embodies a creative potential that can be unleashed and turned to

valuable ends. Yet, traditionally, social and economic systems have been supportive of the

creative talents of a small minority, while neglecting the creative capacity of the broader society

(Florida, 2002). Recently, with the powerful spread of the Internet, which facilitates

communication and the sharing of ideas between people across geographical distances, but

also helps the penetration of commercial mass-media products and their underlying

philosophies, thus potentially carrying the menace of undermining cultural diversity, the

practice of community cultural development has been accelerating and being recognized “as a

means of awakening and mobilizing resistance to imposed cultural values” (Adams & Goldbard,

2005, 3). Interacting locally and also across geographical boundaries through Internet,

numerous concerted efforts have been mobilizing people to embrace new attitudes towards

race and gender relations, to recognize and appreciate minority cultures, and to have an

intelligent use of the environment. In each of these causes, issues related to cultural diversity

and modes of integration become crucial: “a tenet of community cultural development practice

has been to demand public space, support and recognition for the right of excluded

©2011, Regina Miranda, Cidade Criativa / Cultural Transformations

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communities to assert their place in cultural life, to give expression to their own cultural values

and histories” (Adams, and Goldbard, 2005, 20), and to find ways to move social groups from

simple acceptance to achieving respect, and appreciation for difference. Moreover, different

models have been tried to find mechanisms to integrate diversity: preserving differences. And

yet, the challenge of building creative eco-systems, with the potential to empower people’s

creativity on a large scale, lies ahead of us. This text proposes sociochoreology1 (Miranda, 2009)

as a systemic map for the understanding of social rituals, from the most ordinary practices to

the most codified movement events, and sociochoreological competency as core knowledge for

the development of collaborative processes, such as the ones that happen in creative cities.

Choreology is a knowledge identified and developed by movement theorist Rudolf Laban

(1879 -1958), as “the theory of the laws of dance events manifested in the synthesis of spatial

and temporal experience” (Laban 1926, cited in Maletic, 1987, 13). Believing that the plasticity

of choreological thinking allows for the extension of its practice to the cultural arena, where

human interactions embody human intelligence, knowledge and creativity, and where “many

events that formerly would not be thought of as art or performance are now so designated”

(Schechner, 2003, 31), sociochoreology, as proposed by Miranda (2009), approaches the habits,

rituals, and routines of life as performance. Asserting that there are limits to what “is” a

performance, Schechner (2003) explains that “just about anything can be studied “as”

performance” (Schechner, 2003, 31), but certain events are definitely performances, while

others can be perceived as such. Carlson (1996) adds: “the recognition that our lives are

1 Sociochoreology is a term introduced by Miranda, in 2009, to indicate a perspective that analyses social interactions as performance.


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structured according to repeated and socially sanctioned modes of behavior raises the

possibility that all human activity could potentially be considered as performance” (Carlson,

1996, 4). Expanding this idea, Schechner (2003) remarks:

Playing professional roles, gender and race roles, and shaping one’s identity are not

make-believe actions (as playing a role on stage or in a film most probably is). The

performances of everyday life “make belief” – create the very social realities they enact

(Schechner, 2003, 35)

Sociochoreology understands performance as the embodied integration of various

interdependent performance strands: the “performer” 2, movement, sound, time, and space,

articulated through the principles of embodiment and corporeality 3. The interdependent

perspective of choreology articulates the performance strands through the triadic perspective

of creation, performance, and reception; the three constituents of idea, medium and

treatment; and the relationship between notions of process and product (Preston-Dunlop &

Sanchez-Colberg, 2002), provoking a kind of engagement that interweaves participating,

evaluating, and shaping the performance event (Miranda, 2008). As such, the choreological

perspective brings to the social scene the imprint of the “dancer/choreographer”, someone

who is capable of both evoking and being moved by unfolding interactions, creatively

interlocking its strands to generate innovative structures that sustain and advance their

purpose.

Sociochoreological practice demands systems thinking, defined by Aronson (1996) as the

conceptual ability to perceive events as a whole, instead of focusing attention in each of its

elements. Senge (1999) adds that system thinking gives access to seeing interrelationships and


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patterns of change, rather than snapshots, and offers the ability to connect events that are

apparently dissociated (Senge, 1999). Unlike the traditional analytical way of thinking, which

focuses on separating the elements of what is being studied, systems thinking focuses on the

interactions of what is being studied with all the other elements of the system to which it is a

part, and how these interrelations produce behavior. In this way, instead of isolating smaller

and smaller parts of the system being studied, as an issue is being explored system thinking

works by expanding its view to take into account larger and larger numbers of interactions, thus

producing more and more territories of investigation and creative discourses (Aronson, 1996;

Miranda, 2008).

Aronson (1996) indicates two models of systems thinking: the Whole System model,

which analyzes all the possible relationships within the system; and the Open System model,

which focuses on the relationship between the system being analyzed and its ever expanding

internal/external environment. The author remarks how the conjunction of both can be a

powerful process to analyze and change systems:

The character of systems thinking makes it extremely effective on the most difficult

types of problems to solve: those involving complex issues, those that depend a great

deal on the past or on the actions of others, and those stemming from ineffective

coordination among those involved. Examples of areas in which systems thinking has

proven its value include: complex problems that involve helping many actors see the

“big picture” and not just part of it; recurring problems or those that have been made

worse by past attempts to fix them; issues where an action affects (or is affected by) the


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environment surrounding the issue, either the natural environment or the competitive

environment; problems whose solutions are not obvious (Aronson, 1996, 1).

In envisioning urban development strategies, problems are complex: either directly or

indirectly, they involve multiple actors from different cultures; they are affected and affect a

quickly changing external environment; and they are, at least in part, the result of past actions.

Dealing with such problems is notoriously difficult and the results of conventional solutions are

often poor enough to create discouragement about the prospects of ever addressing them

properly (Aronson, 1996). By focusing on the entire system and perceiving subsystems’

potential internal and external connections, instead of addressing each of its points as separate

events, sociochoreology makes it possible to identify innovative solutions capable of bringing

positive effects that can leverage improvement throughout the whole community. Focusing on

the interrelation between external and internal feedbacks helps to keep the big picture,

enhances connectivity, and offers possibilities to spot and seize opportunities to create

synergies within and across communities. When used as a systemic approach to develop

creative cities, sociochoreology uses the combination of the Whole and the Open Systems

model, focusing both “within”, interlocking all of the strands that connect the community

theatrical performances2, thus interconnecting all the leverage points that give nexus to life

theatrical performances; and also “without”, attending to the relationships between the system

being explored – the community - and its internal/external environment.

Sociochoreology can also be an efficient framework to interconnect Adam and

Goldfarb’s (2005) core principles for orienting cultural community development: active

2 The term is here used in the sense proposed by Brazilian playwright and drama theorist Augusto Boal (2009), to whom theater is not just an event, but also a way of life.


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participation in cultural life; cultural equality; diversity as a socio-cultural asset; arts and culture

activities as incubators for social transformation; cultural process equally important as cultural

product; culture as a dynamic structure; and the legitimacy of artists as agents of social

transformation. The purpose of this text is not to make direct correlations between

sociochoreological concepts and each of these principles, and even less to make an extensive

survey of all sociochoreological possibilities in developing creative communities, but indicate

some sociochoreological pathways between Adam and Goldfarb’s (2005) principles, and convey

why sociochoreological system thinking is a desirable competence for leadership engaged in

creative community development.

The sociochoreological perspective, inspired by the “Choreological Studies” developed

by Preston-Dunlop (2002), starts from a position of embodiment and corporeality, aiming to

observe/experience “the lived body’s own multiple constitution, namely, the body as a

cultural phenomenon and, most importantly, the body that is not just a vehicle of meaning but

an inter-subjective identity-in-the making” (Preston-Dunlop and Sanchez-Colberg, 2002, 11).

The concept of corporeality presents the body as a continuous process of redefinitions that

includes its numerous instances: a plastic body that is simultaneously personal, social,

emotional, sexual, biological, psychological, and intertwined with “a space, which is in itself

socio-personal, political, domestic, abstract, conscious, unconscious, etc.” (Preston-Dunlop,

and Sanchez-Colberg, 2002, 9). Miranda (2008) unfolds the concept, suggesting it indicates

“the body of the human being in the art of living and continuously reinventing itself”

(Miranda, 2008, 83) in constant deviations and transformations, fueled by imagination and the

unleashing of its creative potential (Miranda, 2008). Embodiment, indicates the process that


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fuses ideas with movement and the performer of the movement. In Laban-based

sociochoreology, this process includes the interplay of Body-Effort-Shape-Space (BESS) in

conscious and unconscious processes; the ways collective knowledge is impregnated in the

person’s behavior; and how history and circumstances are performed, for example, in the

performer’s choice of clothing, or in hers/his use of time/local-specific verbal and non-verbal

vocabularies. Ultimately, embodying indicates dynamics of presence, how this network of

intensities is enacted in the performer, becoming vivid/visible in a “body in constant process

of actualization and becoming…a body that claims as much for processes of organization and

disorganization” (Miranda, 2008, 35 – 83), that needs as much orientation as disorientation for

its vital balance: “this body, always artistic, permanently recreates its surviving possibilities

with imagination and creative power” (Miranda, 2008, 83).

The embodied performer, instead of being a detached observer of events, is an active

shaper and participant in his/her community’s cultural life. Enjoying and understanding

entertainment as pleasurable and necessary for a creative life, s/he refuses the excess of

passivity that has been generated by the habit of primarily absorbing “reality” through the

media, agreeing that “the muscles of cultural participation atrophy with chronic under use,

leaving a population in thrall to urgent-sounding messages beamed over the airwaves” (Adams

and Goldbard, 2005, 17). Reflecting on the negative effects of the media in the civic society,

Weber (1995) declares:

If we remain as spectators, if we bravely remain where we are, in front of the TV

monitor, the catastrophes will always remain in the outside, they will always be the

“objects” for an “individual” – this is the implicit promise of the media. Nevertheless,


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this comforting promise includes an equally clear menace, although not directly

expressed: “Remain where you are. Because, if you move, this can easily result in an

intervention, be it humanitarian or not” (Weber, 1995, 26).

Lehman (2007) remarks that the repetition and level of reality of private and violent

images shared by the media creates a habit of perceiving these scenes as a distant reality. In

this relationship, the dissociation between the event and the spectator can lead to a kind of

emotional flatness, which makes the individual capable of absorbing the most cruel images –

even if accompanied by quick outbursts of indignation. The lack of awareness of the human

connection to these images recedes in favor of the character of information, thus impairing the

amalgam between perception and – action.

A citizen, as a performer, needs to acquire knowledge by immersing in the event,

exploring and experiencing it, creating and observing from within, understanding and actively

establishing connections, providing options, and new pathways of experimentation. This

multilayered exercise creates commitment, provokes complexity and indicates the “difference

between understanding and knowing, being the later a creative and complex activity that

includes deciphering, understanding, (re)creating, and embodying” (Miranda, 2008, 39-40).

Preston-Dunlop (2002) indicates “the knowledge from experience and the knowledge from

observation are distinct but essentially inter-related and ultimately inter-dependent.

Articulation of this inter-relationship is essentially choreological in that it requires this

multilevel of complexity for its knowing” (Preston-Dunlop, and Sanchez-Colberg, 2002, 11).

Sociochoreology works under the assumption that creativity comes from people, and

that it can be “activated and nurtured in multiple ways, by employers, by people themselves


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and by the communities where they locate” (Florida, 2002, 5). Acting as

“dancers/choreographers”, sociochoreologists suggest experiential activities and events that

provoke exciting embodiments, reflection, and personal/social commitment. In the Rio de

Janeiro Carnival, for example, multiple teams that include sociochoreologists, movement

analysts, architects, choreographers, business executives, costume designers, musicians,

dancers, visual artists, and more, come together to create an event, which far from being a

three day tourist festivity (which it also is) represents a yearlong continuous involvement, deep

commitment, and the hard work of a great number of communities of more than 20 000

individuals, who construct their social identity as creative people, acting collectively for

something that represents their creative identity. In this kind of creative community, the

sociochoreologist’s role is manifold, but core to the process’ vitality is the competency of

leveraging people’s awareness of the interdependence and equal importance of all the creative

strands, thus keeping the big picture; of envisioning collective experiential possibilities to

enhance participants’ embodiment; of proposing a flow of events that, by sharing people’s

multiple achievements, enhance their sense of belonging, pride, and mutual trust; and,

moreover, of helping in creating social-ecological work conditions to nurture the sustainability

of the collaborative creative work.

The principle of cultural equality also finds powerful correlations with the

sociochoreological approach, which attaches equal importance to all the performance strands,

for example, not creating hierarchical relevance either to the performer, to the idea, or to the

written, spoken or non-verbal texts, but observing and creating new meanings from their

interrelationship. In this sense, Preston-Dunlop’s (2002) choreological concept of triadic


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perspective, which examines the relationship between creation, performance, and reception,

as overlapping processes, offers an alternative to theories that associate each of these

perspectives to a role, often placing one or another in privileged positions (Preston-Dunlop,

and Sanchez-Colberg, 2002). Usually, the creator is associated with the thinker, the leader, or

the director; the performer is seen as the doer, the manager or employee, or the actor; and

the audience is perceived as the receiver, the target group. Sociochoreology, on the other

hand, understands that the process of thinking-creating involves exploring, discovering, self-

appreciation, constant evaluations, and choices; performing-doing embodies thinking,

exploring, creating, problem-solving and imagining/pre-appreciating the desired impact; and

receiving/appreciating involves re-interpretations, a creative process of discovery and

construction of meaning, which is interweaved with one’s own memory, experience,

expectations, and culture (Preston-Dunlop, and Sanchez-Colberg, 2002; Miranda, 2008).

Cultural Equality, in the international context, is concerned with equal treatment

between diverse cultures. Within a multicultural nation-state, cultural equality is concerned

about the equality between all cultural communities that shape the contemporary society,

including the many hybrid groups that can’t be defined by belonging to a defined culture. The

approach emphasizes how diverse cultural groups bring different and equally valuable

competencies and perspectives to any discussion table. The exercise of approaching different

cultural groups through sociochoreology principles becomes an equality building perspective:

it offers a repertoire of spatial structures to approach cultural equity, such as the Laban Rings

and the Borromean Knots, which are indicative of unusual connections and of numerous

possible transformations. The embodied practices of these structures gives valuable insights


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into individual and group preferences, bringing coherence to what could be fragmented, and

helping in identifying the main activities and effective pathways for supporting cultural

equality and preserving cultural diversity, while being inclusive of the post-plural hybrid

cultural categories, which account for the “millions of mixed neither-nor or both-and

individuals inhabiting both megacities and rural outposts in many countries” (Cowan,

Dembour, and Wilson, 2001, 135).

Cultural diversity refers to the variety of differences between people. If the concept

may sound simple, when the range of diversity encompasses race, gender, ethnic group, age,

personality, national origin, cognitive style, tenure, religion, organizational function,

educational background, and more, leveraging diversity in a community or organization

becomes complex to the point of being unmanageable. When not effectively managed,

differences can represent a potential barrier, for example reducing the fluency of

communication, and increasing conflicts among community members. Leader’s respond to

diversity challenge in a variety of ways: some try to avoid it by creating homogeneous groups,

while others who are effectively facing the challenge have been reaping the benefits of

increased creativity and innovation. Nevertheless, there is a crucial difference in just having

diversity and leveraging diversity as a cultural development resource, creating conditions for

maximizing and sustaining its positive potential. For purposes of creative community

development, Cox’s (2001) definition of diversity as “the variation of social and cultural

identities among people existing together in a defined employment or market setting” (Cox,

2001, 3), is “neither so broad as to mean any difference between people nor so narrow as to

be limited to differences of gender and race” (Cox, 2001, 3). Cultural diversity not only


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involves how people perceive themselves, but how they perceive others. Those perceptions

affect their interactions and choices, and different choices promote different kinds of

intercultural exchanges, and different outcomes in the cultural change process (Davidson,

2002).

Differences may escape perception when the worldview constrains the capacity to see,

therefore, in leveraging diversity as a socio-cultural asset, community development programs

must ensure that all participants learn how to see, understand and value diversity. Leadership

must build the awareness that some differences may not be seen by all who participate in the

development effort, and must have the skills to provide opportunities to build and share

sociochoreological observation competency. While many differences, such as gender or race,

are easier to be seen, others, such as decision-making styles, the way people manage

ambiguity, perceive time, or use space are less evident. Strategies for understanding difference

must include information about difference in the form of books, films, magazines, as well as

invite the contribution of people from diverse backgrounds, in the form of life narratives,

embodied practices, and trustful disclosure of diversity problems: “listening creates data.

Similarly, asking questions also produces relevant information critical for understanding

difference” (Davidson, 2002, 8). This attitude acknowledges the problem that “in the absence of

understanding the nature of difference, one can only engage in stereotypes…and that

stereotype is often inaccurate by virtue of oversimplification” (Davidson, 2002, 8). Valuing

difference, as the capacity of appreciating diversity and being transformed by it, is the

fundamental sociochoreological attitude, and one that integrates all previous efforts.

Nevertheless, even people who theoretically value diversity may fail in collaborating and


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sharing knowledge across differences, forming subgroups or coalitions along similar

demographics attributes - same age, gender, nationality, education levels, and/or functions and

tenures. Each of these groups tends to see itself as the “in-group”, while those across the

boundary are seen as the “out-group” – people whose interests are perceived as different and

sometimes in competition with the “in-group” shared interests (Davidson, 2002). To value and

integrate difference at all levels of the city life, a sharing principle needs to govern the key

organizational processes, and this can only happen when cities’ leadership members acquire

intercultural competence, the multi-stranded skill that sustains change mechanisms.

Intercultural competence integrates intercultural sensitivity, meaning knowing that cultural

differences exist, as well as similarities, and having a positive concept, curiosity, and open-

minded attitude towards difference, a conscious effort towards non-judgmental observation of

different behaviors, and availability for social interactions in multiple culture sets; intercultural

awareness, which relates to the perception and possibility of articulation of one’s own and

others cultural rules, biases, and values, and the sensitivity and sensibility to understand and

respect these differences; intercultural communication, which encompasses the ability to

initiate, develop and be fluent in multicultural social interactions, to perceive the patterns of

interaction and to be at ease in multicultural domains; and intercultural knowledge, which

accounts for a sophisticated understanding of the cultural characteristics (history, values,

beliefs, and behaviors) and complexities of different cultures, and being prepared to skillfully

negotiate a shared understanding, based on cultural differences and commonalities. It also

emphasizes the idea of effectively operating in different cultural contexts (Cross, Bazron,

Dennis, & Isaacs, 1989).


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Achieving intercultural competence is a learning process that demands theoretical

understanding and immersive personal experience. It demands sophisticated training. The

inter-related strands of sociochoreology – “performer”, movement, time, space, and sound -

offer a complex network to be explored to achieve intercultural competence. The performer is

observed in its physical traits, ethnical and cultural imprints, eventual hybridism, choice of

clothes, choice of verbal and written vocabulary, gender, age, etc. The movement experience is

enhanced and evaluated by the exploration of Laban’s interrelated categories of Body / Effort /

Shape / Space (BESS) 5, a dynamic map that indicates patterns of embodiment. In this

relationship, the Body is understood in its “organizations, gestures, postures, fragmentations,

isolations, re-integrations, dynamics, forms, internal-external connections and motion patterns”

(Miranda, 2008, 19). Effort, which interrelates the qualitative aspects of Weight, Time, Flow,

and Space, configures “the territories of emotional intensities and dynamic rhythms, and how

these are inscribed in movement phrases” (Miranda, 2008, 20). Shape refers to “the plasticity of

the body, its transformations, changes of volume, and manners to sculpt the space, in a

continuous process of appearing, disappearing, and reappearing that indicates the body’s

adaptability to its internal/external needs” (Miranda, 2008, 24). And Space presents the mobile

body architecture and its harmonic patterns of organizations in association with tri-dimensional

crystal forms. Miranda’s (2008) Body-Spacesm, a system thinking development of Laban’s

theories, offers additions to the spatial representations used by Laban, metaphorically

proposing the association of change processes of with topological representations, whose main

characteristic are to convey qualitative processes of transformation.

Sound, time and space are also taken into consideration in the sociochoreological shaping


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and/or reading of an event, be it theatrical in the traditional sense, or the daily life

performances produced by society. Sound, for example, plays a great part in most social

gatherings: the type of music (classical or popular, and what genre) sets different atmospheres;

the choice of words convey more or less formality; and the length of silences are as important

in musical, theatrical events, or in ordinary dialogues, potentially generating tension, wonder,

or uneasiness. Choices relative to space, until recently “restricted” to issues relating to its size,

architecture, and shape, now include choices between natural, constructed, and/or virtual

environments. In the new era of global collective creation and exchange of media content,

virtual work environments have been facilitating creative and innovative collaborative work,

and becoming the choice for multiple across-borders projects. In addition, how people are

distributed in space is so important that wrong management of this aspect can ruin a promising

opportunity: in fact, to know who should sit next to who reveals diplomatic finesse. To choose a

large space for a small gathering, tells as much about expectations as it tells about the

organizers of an event; to receive someone across the table in an virtual or real environment,

has a very different reading and enacts different postures than dialoguing face to face without

any furniture in between. Among numerous decisions relating to time, in terms of duration,

rhythm, and speed, and also how time can evoke historical, political, social, philosophical,

and/or economical circumstances, are of great importance to a Sociochoreologist. The duration

of an event, for example, varies enormously from one culture to another: if in the US, a

reception frequently runs from 6 to 8PM, in Brazil, unless the occasion is very formal, there is a

time to start, but seldom a time to end. So, time duration immediately conveys the desired

level of formality.


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The intrinsic value of the arts, both as aesthetic products of human culture, as well as its

instrumental use in achieving a multitude of purposes, such as to present issues and ideas, to

educate, entertain, and revitalize communities, or acting as a catalyst for social change, is

widely recognized. The US National Standards for Arts Education (1994) emphasizes how

children and adolescents grow in their ability to apprehend their world when arts are part of

their lives; how through the practice of arts they develop a better sense of self, learn how to

express themselves, expand horizons, and develop a greater sense of belonging. Openness,

respect for others, collaborative spirit, group commitment, perseverance, and moreover

creativity, attitudes that are core to performing arts’ practices, are important to be embodied,

and can be transferred and illuminate situations in other aspects of daily life, specially the ones

that require creative solutions (NSDE, 1994). As Brazilian theater director and theorist Augusto

Boal’s (2009) asserts:

Even if one is unaware of it, human relationships are structured in a theatrical way. The

use of space, body language, choice of words and voice modulation, the confrontation

of ideas and passions, everything that we demonstrate on the stage, we live in our lives.

We are theatre! Weddings and funerals are “spectacles”, but so, also, are daily rituals so

familiar that we are not conscious of this. Occasions of pomp and circumstance, but also

the morning coffee, the exchanged good-mornings, timid love and storms of passion, a

senate session or a diplomatic meeting - all is theatre. One of the main functions of our

art is to make people sensitive to the “spectacles” of daily life in which the actors are

their own spectators, performances in which the stage and the stalls coincide. We are all

artists. By doing theatre, we learn to see what is obvious but what we usually can’t see


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because we are only used to looking at it. What is familiar to us becomes unseen: doing

theatre throws light on the stage of daily life. (…) Theatre is not just an event; it is a way

of life! We are all actors: being a citizen is not living in society, it is changing it. 6

The power of arts in urban regeneration has also been attested by spaces such as the

Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts. The Museum’s leadership declares that they

believe that the arts foster community identity, and that “a strong identity rallies confidence,

hope, productivity, pride and economic vibrancy”, which are the basic “conditions for a healthy

community”. These, however, as they emphasize, “cannot be created without risk, adventure,

and the willingness to embrace the new” (www.massmoca.org). Since its inauguration, in 1999,

MASS MoCA has been creating new markets, numerous jobs, attracting tourists, and building

the long-term enrichment of a region previously in economic decline.

In addition to experiencing and observing everyday behavior and social rituals as

performance, sociochoreology is a creative process in itself, with the power of enhancing

people’s creativity and fostering innovation. Its systemic perspective addresses people’s

individual and interactive complexities, developing their perception and creative skills and

enhancing their commitment to society. Moreover, it also offers pathways that generate

connections, creating a multiplicity of “leverage points”, which embody the potential to create

meaningful results at individual and collective levels. Creating the necessary understanding of

the community “big picture”, with its internal-external connections, and facilitating the access

and engagement with daily life’s social, ritualistic, scientific, ordinary, artistic, and educational

aspects, the broader perspective of sociochoreology is an effective and exciting framework to

deal with the kinds of issues that are marked by complexity and great number of interactions,


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such as the ones that characterize today’s multicultural communities and organizations.

Endnotes:

1. In this text, the word community is not a geographical definition, but a term that makes a distinction from the format of one-to-many, to the many-to-many participatory nature of the community work; cultural indicates a concept that includes, but is more extensive than the arts’ field, incorporating a broader range of practices; and development suggests the dynamics of a purposeful transformational practice, which incorporates horizontal sharing principles of self and social development, rather than hierarchical perspectives imposed from “above”, or from instances that see themselves as “developed”, bringing culture to or helping communities “in development”.

2. Performer is a problematic word, and recent dance scholarship has been alternatively using “body”, which is also problematic because it may convey a separation from the person. Since the present text articulates performances of everyday life, the use of the term performer seems more accurate.

3. Valerie Preston-Dunlop (2002) proposes four strands: performer, movement, sound, and space.

4. The borromean knot is a topological representation of a three-ring ensemble, where the third ring, interlocking with the first two establishes a kind of interdependent relationship that has the characteristic of only exist through this interlock. In this configuration, if any ring is cut, the other two are set free.

5. BESS – Body/Effort/Shape/Space are written in capital letters in the Laban System to differentiate from the common usage of these terms.

6. This text was sent by Augusto Boal (2009) to the author of this paper from the hospital bed where a few days later he passed away, in 2009. It is a variation of a larger text that he had written for UNESCO’s International Theater Day, on March 27th, 2009.


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Developing Creative Cities: A Sociochoreology Approach