Its practitioners see it as a transdisciplinary movement, dispensing with the movement vocabulary of traditional dance to integrate or substitute that of other performing arts (theater, video, music, and plastic arts).
Most of the choreographers who developed non-dance came from the milieu of nouvelle danse française (also known as jeune danse française: "new" or "young" French dance) in which they participated as performers in the 1980s.
They became choreographers in the 1990s, their work focusing increasingly on creating pieces where dance and dance movement disappear in favor of many other activities or theatrical techniques, including legitimate theater, lectures, plastic arts, music, and often video, film, or projections.
[2] The precursor to this movement is Orazio Massaro[citation needed] (a dancer in the company of Dominique Bagouet from 1987 to 1990), who created the piece Volare for the Montpellier Dance Festival in 1990.
Major choreographers associated with non-dance include Boris Charmatz, Jérôme Bel, Hervé Robbe, Xavier Le Roy, Alain Buffard, Benoît Lachambre, Josef Nadj, Maguy Marin (in her recent pieces), Carlotta Sagna, Vahram Zaryan (in his recent mime and dance performances) and Wayn Traub.