The role of repetition in professional dance practice, often dismissed as merely technical or secondary, in fact constitutes a central pillar in the creation and transmission of choreographic works. Situated at the intersection of execution and memory, repetition functions not as a passive mimicry but as an active mode of mediation, one that shapes the aesthetic, performative and temporal continuity of dance pieces. The figure responsible for this labour—the rehearsal director or repetidor/a—has traditionally occupied a marginal position within both academic discourse and the artistic field, despite bearing responsibility for the embodied maintenance of choreographic intent and the adaptation of movement vocabularies across different performers and settings. By highlighting the invisible structures that sustain artistic production, this role challenges dominant narratives of authorship that centre creative originality in a single choreographer. Instead, it draws attention to the collective, iterative, and situated dimensions of dance-making. Analysed through a sociological lens that foregrounds the dynamics between theory and practice—particularly the perceived divide between craft and art—the rehearsal director emerges as a critical but overlooked actor in the artistic ecology. Their work embodies a kind of applied knowledge, rooted in lived experience, relational sensitivity, and historical awareness of the piece being transmitted. This reframing invites a broader reconsideration of how labour is distributed, recognised, and valued in the performing arts. It also raises deeper epistemological questions about what constitutes artistic contribution when creation is sustained not only through innovation, but through repetition, care, and interpretive fidelity. Such insights call for a more inclusive understanding of dance as a collaborative and recursive practice, where repetition is not the negation of creativity but one of its most fundamental expressions.
