Systems of Choreography: Performing Normal in Public

Building upon facial recognition and other systems of identification, the next generation of biometric technology includes behavior recognition, training AI to analyze and interpret how bodies move in public spaces. Paired with already ubiquitous CCTV cameras, these software systems detect a range of motions—trips, falls, fighting, irregular gait—anything that deviates from the established norm. In this paper, I argue that by criminalizing certain movements, behavior recognition technologies effectively codify a technique, a vocabulary of acceptable and allowable movements, enacting a form of social choreography. Within this choreography, what movements are available to whom? What constitutes normal, and who is afforded or denied such a claim? In the fall of 2019, I undertook a corporeal engagement with these questions through the development of a short video project entitled One True False Move, seeking to disrupt the codes of normalcy and destabilize the surveillant technology’s position as social choreographer. In theorizing a conceptual framework and reflecting upon creative practice, I explore the body as a site of resistance, endowed with the resilient capacity to move in or out of step with systematic codes and counter attempts to be rendered legible.

Battling in the Bronx: Social Choreography and Outlaw Culture Among Early Hip-Hop Streetdancers in New York City

This article closely examines oral histories of b-boys Aby and Kwikstep, b-girl Baby Love, and poppers Cartoon and Wiggles, and the social choreography necessary to navigate the streets of the South Bronx in the 1970s and 1980s that has an indelible link to four core battling principles as articulated by 1970s b-boy Trac2: survivalism, strategizing, nomadism, and illusionism. By comparing and contrasting foundational elements of battling techniques with life lessons about growing up in the Bronx, the comparison signals the impact of “outlaw culture” within hip-hop, and the counterdominant sensibilities taught in battle cyphers.