Enhancing Choreographic Objects (EChO) originated from Choreographic Objects: traces and artefacts of physical intelligence, an AHRC funded project initiated in 2008 by Scott deLahunta, James Leach and Sarah Whatley. That study involved a series of three workshops centring on the output of four research teams working in collaboration with the choreographers William Forsythe (DE), Siobhan Davies (UK), Wayne McGregor (UK) and Emio Greco|PC (NL). These teams were working to bring choreographic ideas and processes into newly productive exchanges with both general audiences and other specialist knowledge areas. The variety of resources they were creating to mediate this exchange constituted the ‘choreographic objects’ that the workshops focused on, bringing them together for the first time to engage theories of knowledge production and transfer.
The four ‘choreographic object’ projects involved in the study were: Synchronous Objects (William Forsythe), Siobhan Davies Replay, the Choreographic Language Agent (Wayne McGregor) and Inside Movement Knowledge & Capturing Intention (Emio Greco|PC). Through applying concepts from social science and anthropology to analyse the potentials for digital choreographic objects to encapsulate dance as knowledge, and to facilitate its circulation, the engagement ultimately enriched the processes of creating and disseminating the initiatives participating in the project. It was this successful interdisciplinary exchange between scholarly disciplines and professional arts practice, that inspired the follow-on application Enhancing Choreographic Objects (EChO).