Intimacy Choreographers and their importance to the future of theatre performance

Lindsay Somers, left, works with actors while Casey Hudecki, second from right, and actor, director and producer Liz Whitmere look on in the background. (Alice Hopton/CBC)

Imagine you’ve been cast in a show. You’re excited to have the job and to meet your new castmates, and you’re ready to dive headfirst into the material. You’ve memorized your lines, attended every rehearsal, and you’re putting in the hard work necessary to put on a good production.

But then it happens. In a rehearsal room full of people, you find yourself facing your scene partner and hearing the director tell you that you’re supposed to kiss them.

Yes, this moment is in the script. You’ve seen it there in the stage directions. And sure, it’s an important moment when it comes to telling the story. But you’ve only known this person for a couple of weeks!

What if you’ve never kissed someone onstage before? Or what if you have and you had a bad experience? How is this supposed to be a comfortable situation? How are you supposed to feel relaxed in this work environment?

Enter intimacy choreography: the mysterious branch of the theatre world that has only recently become more well-known. In fact, it was the use of intimacy direction on the hit Netflix show Bridgerton that is really putting intimacy work on the map.

I’ll be honest, despite working professionally in theatre, I have never had the opportunity to work with an intimacy choreographer. In fact, before this article, I had very little knowledge of what the work entails.

In order to understand both what intimacy choreography is and why it’s so important, I reached out to professional intimacy choreographers Dan Granke and Nicole Perry to share their experiences.

Dan Granke is an Instructor of Theatre at the University of South Florida in Tampa, where they teach acting and movement while also directing shows. They also specialize in fight choreography and intimacy choreography.

A mentee of Dan’s, Nicole Perry works as a freelance intimacy choreographer and serves as the Resident Intimacy Choreographer for Measure for Measure Theatre in Florida. Together, they were able to shine a light on the importance of intimacy choreography in the theatrical rehearsal room.

So let’s start with the basics. What even is intimacy choreography?

We’ll start with Nicole’s official definition of the job: “Intimacy Direction refers to creating and setting moments of intimacy (moments that require personal vulnerability between characters, often involving physical contact) in theatrical performances.”

So the intimacy choreographer is the person who helps make the relationships and connections we see onstage happen. Is there a scene with a kiss? The intimacy choreographer helped with that. What about a simulated sex scene? Hopefully, an intimacy choreographer was involved.

But it’s not just all about sex.

“One of the most profound scenes of intimacy I’ve seen was somebody choreographing someone laying down a body,” Dan stressed. “It was powerfully intimate and it was an amazing thing to see.”

Nicole added, “So much of the job is advocacy for actors, what the actors’ boundaries are, what they’re confident in doing, and then translating. What is the director's vision? Translating that into movement for the actors or translating actor movement or boundaries back to the director.”

“It's about creating a space in which people can take bold risks, in which people can step outside their comfort zone because there is simply nothing comfortable about kissing a stranger at work,” Dan explained. “It’s also about advocating for performers who feel like they can’t say no. My job is to make sure that somebody who wants to say no, can say no.”

So how did these two choreographers discover their passion and skill for intimacy choreography? What was their path?

Dan was brought to intimacy choreographer because of their specialization in stage combat and movement. During their time pursuing a BFA from the University of Michigan and then an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, they were encouraged to embrace the importance of movement in their acting and directing work.

“But as a movement person, you’re going to be asked to do things other than fights,” Dan explained.

Soon, instead of focusing only on the fight choreography that they were hired to do, they found themselves being asked more and more often to help with scenes and moments that involved intimacy.

“The assumption is that if you know one thing about movement then you know everything about movement, which is not true,” said Dan. “Just because you’re a fight director doesn’t mean you’re an intimacy director. I thought that if I’m getting hired to do this stuff, then I need to train with people who are doing this already.”

So Dan began to train. Learning from Alicia Rodis and Tonia Sina (who coined the term “intimacy choreographer”), Dan embraced this way of approaching movement and theatre and dove into the work.

“What I found when I worked with them, was that these guidelines, these pillars, were really amazing, and a way of approaching being collaborative in a room,” reflected Dan. “And I said, ‘This is the way I should be directing. This is the way I should be teaching. This is a whole approach to making theatre that’s about empowering every creator in the room, about being an equal, being a collaborator.’”

Nicole’s path to intimacy work was a bit different. While teaching high school theatre, she was working on a musical in which the lead actors had to kiss. When the female lead approached her with concern about the kiss, she asked Nicole whether it could be set like a piece of choreography.

“I was like, ‘This is not good. There’s gotta be something better!’” said Nicole. “I started doing research and found Intimacy Directors International and Theatrical Intimacy Education. They had both been in official existence for about a year at this point, and they were doing training.”

She took one day of training and it clicked. She knew that she had to learn more.

So we know what it is and how people might find themselves drawn to this path, but why is it so important? Why should theatres start hiring intimacy professionals? And why should the rest of us learn more?

“One reason is obviously that there has been a great history of abuse of performers,” Dan elaborated. “Every couple of months, there’s some story of some artistic director being abusive to actors, or about actors being sexually harassed by people in hierarchical positions. When you have a job on the line, when there’s not a lot of money coming in, when you worry about the reference this person might give you, it becomes very difficult to say no to these things. We help eliminate harm.”

“It adds a level of professionalism to a production,” continued Nicole. “This is a working environment. In no other work setting would it be appropriate to kiss your coworker or harass your coworker. Asking coworkers to negotiate those things can be really confusing! This helps give a clear boundary. It really treats the story with a lot of integrity.”

Beyond its importance as a matter of safety, intimacy choreography is also vital when it comes to telling the story. Theatre is all about telling the story. And intimate moments between human beings onstage can be powerful, chilling, heartbreaking, uncomfortable, beautiful, and so much more. Why wouldn’t we want the story told in the best possible way?

As Nicole said, “If it’s integral to the story that this is believable, then we should have someone whose job it is to hold this part of the story.”

“It’s not enough to touch someone, we have to have the sense that you truly have a level of connection with that person. It’s also about having actors have a connection with each other,” Dan elaborated. “Intimacy choreography makes your production better.”

In order to fulfill this enormous role, intimacy choreographers require vast skill sets and are constantly learning and evolving as they work.

“Movement is a huge part of what I do, and I do consider myself a movement specialist in this field. But I also have to have these skills in negotiation and communication,” Nicole explained. “Being super aware of the power dynamics of the room, and not just the power dynamics in terms of title, but of the ones that are maybe unsaid... You pick up on when the body language is telling you something about what’s happening in the room. There are the intersections of gender and race and age and all of that plays into an intimate moment.”

“My job is to figure out what the challenges are and to help meet them and mitigate them,” Added Dan. “It’s about empathy. It’s about paying attention to people.”

But as professionals in an emerging field, there are a lot of misconceptions about what it is that they do. How can we make things a bit less cloudy? I asked the choreographers what they would like people to know about intimacy choreography.

“People think we’re either sex-crazed fiends or that we’re the nannies who are sitting there with a whistle waiting to blow it,” Dan laughed. “We’re not police in that way. I think if I do my job well I can avoid that most of the time.”

“It doesn’t have to be your calling for you to be an advocate for the work,” reminded Nicole. “I would like that level of awareness and knowledge for the industry. ‘I know what this is and I know that this is someone’s job and I know where to go to get that person.’”

And that’s the crux of what I learned from my conversations with Dan and Nicole: Intimacy choreography is both important, and for everyone. Directors, actors, technicians, stage managers, playwrights, choreographers, all of these roles can benefit from learning more about intimacy choreography.

“It doesn’t matter what you think you do in theatre, it’s great to take a basic intimacy class,” Dan emphasized. “ It just helps you understand how consent functions and why it’s important for your work. A basic intimacy workshop will make you a better communicator and a better collaborator. It’ll change everything you do. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, intimacy work will give your vehicle a better engine.”

“Crew can be great advocates!” Nicole added. “The crew sees what happens all day every day, and they know when something is not happening properly. Even if your calling is to be a stage manager, taking courses in consent and anti-bias can be really helpful.”

To learn more about intimacy choreography, both Nicole and Dan suggested the workshops and training led by Intimacy Directors and Coordinators, Theatrical Intimacy Education, and Intimacy Coordinators of Color. There are also organizations throughout the country that teach anti-bias work and “consent for performers”.

“Take a class! Take your first class!” Dan encouraged. “ Take your first class with some humility and be open to the idea that there’s so much more to know.”