Dance Companies Editing and Proofreading Services

A work made in 2009 is revived in 2031. The choreographer is dead, three of the original cast are contactable, the video is a single locked-off camera from the back of a theatre, and the notes are a spiral notebook with counts in it. What survives of the piece is exactly what somebody wrote down at the time, and the difference between a revival and a reconstruction is decided in that notebook.

We edit what dance companies produce — restaging and licensing documentation, choreographic notes and rehearsal records, production and technical specifications for touring, dancer contracts and casting information, funding applications and touring proposals, programme and audience-facing text, education and outreach material, and archive documentation of repertoire. Our editors work on the documents that let a work be danced again.

The restaging document is the only reason a piece outlives its first cast, and its failure is a record of steps without a record of intention. Video shows what happened; it does not show what mattered. We work through these so the structure is recorded as sections with their counts, durations and musical anchors, since a rehearsal director's first task is locating themselves in the piece; so each section separates what is fixed from what is variable, because a work in which the second duet may be cast either way, or the entrance may be from either wing, becomes rigid or arbitrary once nobody knows which; so the quality of movement is described in the choreographer's own terms with an example, given that "soft through the ribs" means something specific to a company and nothing outside it; so the intention behind a moment is recorded where it governs the execution, as a step that must look like a mistake is danced wrongly by anyone told only its shape; so casting requirements are stated in terms of capacity rather than body type where that is what is meant; so the video record is described with what it does not show — the camera position, the cast, the state of the work on that date; so licensing terms cover who may set the work, how many performances, and what changes require permission; and so the people who hold knowledge are named while they can still be asked. Documents written this way keep a repertoire alive.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including choreographic material, contracts and unpublished documentation. We are editors rather than choreographers, notators or rehearsal directors, and we offer no view on the work, its interpretation or its rights. What we can do is record what the video cannot.