From Desire to the Application Form: Dramaturgies of Justification in Contemporary Artistic Creation

In today’s project-based art systems, many choreographic works begin long before entering the studio. They begin as applications, proposals, budgets, schedules and promises: texts that ask artists to imagine a work before it exists, to describe its relevance before it has taken form, and to justify its value in advance. What appears to be an administrative step becomes part of the artistic process itself. The application, then, is not only a document that precedes the work, but a structure that influences how the work comes into being. How does the language of funding enter the studio? What happens to the intentions formulated in writing once bodies, time, collaboration and rehearsal begin to transform them? This research project examines how the need to justify artistic work in advance affects contemporary dance creation.

 

The project places application texts in relation to rehearsal practices and public presentations, tracing how written intentions are followed, changed or left behind in practice. The application form is approached here as a dramaturgical object: a structure that organizes temporal rhythms, artistic choices and an artist’s ability to act within institutional expectations. The project aims to make visible how these frameworks organize artistic labour today, producing both openings and constraints, while asking how desire is translated into application forms, and what choreographic possibilities may emerge from that translation.

Image: (c) Sofia Ponce de León

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Image: (c) Sarah van Wingerden