Dancers are performing artists; music is the primary work they perform—with
the help of an important intermediary: the choreographer. His creative task is
similar to that of a stage director, but carries a more demanding
responsibility: a stage director translates a primary work, a play, into
physical action—a choreographer has to translate a primary work, a composition
of sounds, into another medium, into a composition of movements, and create a
structured, integrated work: a dance.
This task is so difficult and its esthetically qualified practitioners so rare
that the dance has always been slow in its development and extremely
vulnerable. Today, it is all but extinct.