The Hacking Choreography manifesto applies live-coding transparency values to dance: code is visible on stage, and dancers can subvert the program

Kate Sicchio’s Hacking Choreography draft manifesto adapts TOPLAP’s principles to choreographic practice. Its core additions: the dancer retains agency to ‘change the program, ignore the program, or subvert the program’ — making the dancer an active co-author, not just an executor. Code is visible to the audience as a choreographic score. Dance technique is reframed as a tool (like a chainsaw), while choreography is thought. The manifesto extends live coding’s political project into embodied performance: if music live coding insists on transparent algorithm, choreographic live coding insists on transparent choreographic decision-making. This cross-disciplinary extension shows how the manifesto’s values generalize beyond music.

Examples

In a hacking choreography performance, a screen shows the choreographic score being written or modified in real time. The dancer interprets, ignores, or deviates from it. The audience sees both the movement and the decision-making process that shapes it.

Assessment

Compare the TOPLAP music manifesto demand ‘Show us your screens’ with the Hacking Choreography demand ‘The decision making process of the dancer is on display.’ What is structurally identical between these two principles? What is different given the non-textual nature of dance?