Neurochoreography: A Method for Integrating Dance and Neuroscience

Interdisciplinary collaborations between neuroscience and dance have grown rapidly providing scientific evidence into perception, action, and aesthetics. Yet there is limited collaborative work describing clearly articulated choreographic methods and compositional practices for future artists and scientists. We propose Neurochoreography as a choreographic process through which neuroscientific concepts, research designs, or findings are translated into compositional structures, rehearsal practices, and performance conditions. Neurochoreography treats live performance as a site of knowledge transfer and embodied translation between domains, so that choreographic decisions function as explicit experimental factors while preserving artistic aims. Through engaging ecologically valid investigations into formative neuroscientific questions, Neurochoreography may provide novel source material for dance artists to approach the human mind. We suggest Neurochoreography as an example of inter-field dialogue between scientific outreach and artistic output that balances between neuroscience's emphasis on objective, quantifiable measures and performance's commitment to subjective, embodied experience.