Unit 26 - Choreographing dance

Different types of choreographic methodology

When choreographing for the dance performance, we used a range of different choreographic techniques. Each of these techniques have both strengths and weaknesses. 

The first choreographing methodology that I used this year was choreographing a dance to a song and then keeping the same choreography but changing the song. I did this at the start of the year when I choreographed a routine to the song ‘Like I can’ by Sam Smith and then when it came to choreographing ‘A thousand years’, we just changed the song and kept the choreography the same. This is a good method of choreographing because if you really like the material that you have choreographed but the song doesn’t fit your theme anymore, you can just change the song. On the other hand, the choreography may not fit the timing of the new song and you may have to change the timing of the new routine which may confuse your students. 

Another good way of choreographing is to carry out some research into the style that you are choreographing for. Dance styles are always changing and it is good to keep up to date on the latest performance of these styles of dance. Watching videos of people performing these styles is a great way to pick up new ideas for choreography. It is always good to watch what everyone else is doing but don’t copy everything because this could cause it to become boring. I carried out this method quite a lot when I was choreographing the hiplet routine because I had never done this style of dance before and so I took some of the moves from the routines which I had seen online. 

Splitting the routine up into different sections is another way to choreograph a routine. Most songs have a pattern in them which means that the same part of the song is sung more than once or the same tune occurs more than once. To make it easier to choreograph, you can split it into sections, then sections can be repeated several times throughout the routine. It also makes it easier to choreograph a section at a time rather than choreographing to a random point. Just be sure not to repeat the same choreography too much because the audience could get bored. 

Another choreographic methodology is mapping out a journey. For Aurora in Faeriland, we marked out where we wanted the piece to travel to when we were choreographing it. The idea is to do this with chalk if possible but you can always do it in your head if you don’t have anything to mark the floor with. Making a journey on the floor will allow the piece to tell more of a story and will focus on movement before the choreography. However, this method of choreography is not always applicable and probably wouldn’t be applicable if you were choreographing a tap routine for example. 

Lastly, improvisation is another style of choreography. This is a great method to use if you are unsure of what moves to do for the routine. The best way to do improvisation is to improvise with the music on but also film what you are doing so that if you create a nice sequence of moves whilst you are improvising, you will be able to look back on what you did and not have to try and think back to what you did. On the other hand, some people may struggle to improvise if they haven’t had a lot of dance training and therefore this type of choreography may not be for everyone.