Relational Attention in Choreography and the Felt Sense of Motor Learning

Abstract

This paper examines the conceptual foundations of Rethinking Choreography, a collaborative research project developed by Jonathan Burrows and Bojana Cvejić through workshops with dancers between 2020 and 2025. Since November 2025, the project has received AHRC funding in the U.K. and continues in collaboration with Guido Orgs, a psychologist specialising in the neuroscience of movement.  Combining studio-based experimentation with insights from neuroscience, anthropology, and cognitive philosophy, the research challenges the prevailing distinction in contemporary dance between choreography as an external authorial structure and dance as embodied, spontaneous expression. The project argues that choreography should be understood not as a compositional act imposed upon movement but as an intrinsic human capacity for sequencing, anticipation, and adaptation that underlies all dancing. Workshop prompts invited dancers to reflect on improvisation, set material, and embodied skill, revealing both the persistence of these conceptual binaries and their instability in practice. 

This paper is a version of the keynote (“Relational Attention in Choreography and the Felt Sense of Sequenced Behaviour”)  that Jonathan Burrows and I presented at the conference “Cadences: Attentional Moves in the Arts and Everyday Life” at the Communication Institute of Universidade Nova on May 29, 2025. It is a revised version of Cvejić’s sections of the lecture, incorporating Burrows’ comments and reflecting on the findings of the project's preparatory phase (2020–2025) in response to the topic of the conference.