9.3: The Craft of Choreography

There are many books on choreography. In this book focused on Dance Studies, it is important to keep the scope and purpose of this chapter in view. Having argued for a re-formulation of college dance education from mere technique and performance to an emphasis on differentiated career options, any discussion of choreography must be presented from the perspective of cultivating skills for a dance professional. Choreography is not merely a creative act. Choreography is meaningful, political, aesthetic, challenging, technical… this list goes on and on. This means that tools are required for a choreographer to conceive, vision, document, create, transmit and stage their choreographic ideas bringing the creative to life. One of the most difficult tasks for a budding choreographer, and even for veteran movement makers, is to generate new and authentic movement ideas for dance.

Definition: Choreography

The art of creating and arranging movement that will become a dance; choreography is preparing a series of planned or improvised movement phrases and dance step arrangements, assembling them into a completed composition.

Figure 9.4. New and authentic movement ideas, rooted in classical forms, are generated for dance. In India, this Mohiniattam dance is performed as new choreography at a New Choreography National Festival in New Delhi in 2011. (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pallavi_Krishnan_and_Group-2.jpg)

Choreography Journal

The craft of choreography, therefore, should start with something as simple as a choreography journal. Make daily entries in a choreography journal to capture concept ideas, movement phrases that resonate, as well as research. To be an effective and authoritative choreographer, your passion and inspiration alone does NOT place you in a leadership position. You actually need to know what you’re talking about. Preparation is the key! Begin notating ideas immediately! The documentation of movement ideas can be things you’ve seen or had taught to you at a workshop, by a teacher from your past training, or colleagues -- moves and movements that have inspired you. Keep track of movement phrases that are important to you by drawing stick figures, record cool 8 count phrases… but be careful!

Don’t plagiarize… Choreography is considered intellectual property. Choreographic plagiarism is illegal, it is stealing. Either get permission to borrow movement ideas from the choreographer and credit them in your program or check the licensing of a choreographic work (some choreography may be attributed as public domain, though this is rare). Best practice is to tweak movement phrases significantly enough to make it your own!

Definition: Choreographic Plagiarism

The duplication of a choreographer’s movement phrases exactly is considered plagiarism and is a violation of a choreographer’s intellectual property rights.

The idea is to take inspiration, but to avoid exact movement imitation. Yet, how does a budding choreographer make the leap from admiring another’s work to actually creating your own work? The choreography journal can help track ideas. Then to engage a process of puzzling different movement ideas in new ways can help you to track your own intellectual process. Of course, it is possible that a choreographer does not even realize they’re plagiarizing. “Sometimes the copying is subconscious—people regurgitate movement they’ve seen repeatedly and think it’s their own” (Dance Spirit, 2012). Be mindful about your process when viewing dance videos. Choreographic preparation can be inspired by watching awesome dances that have inspired you. Viewing these videos over and over can inculcate familiarity but can also drown out your own voice.

A choreography journal can also house all your research as you prepare for a show. Details of your performance venue regarding music might include run time limits, content limitations, edits, submission formats, submission deadlines and other requirements. Sometimes shows are intended for adult audiences only, but other times shows can be listed as family friendly or age appropriate. Check lyrics of your chosen music for content. Either edit sections out or choose alterative song depending on the venue. Check out websites for song lyrics, there are many options, especially is you search for a karaoke version of your song. Knowing about the details of songs that inspire you can help conceptualize movement ideas.

Who? – Composer/artist

What? – style of song, and what’s it about?

When? – historical context

Where? – where did the music artist(s) grow up, where was the song written so you have a full understanding of all details needed to be thoroughly educated

Why? – Why did the music artist write the song? Do research!

Figure 9.5. El Gabriel, dancer, educator, choreographer in 1974 in Palm Springs, California. Knowing the historical context of music, choreography, even your own training-- is crucial to creating meaningful work. The author of this chapter was greatly influenced by mentor El Gabriel while studying at University of California Irvine in the 1990s. (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/F...EL_GABRIEL.jpg)

Sound Map

Another extremely important tool for a choreographer is to spend time listening to your song, and with exacting analysis, document the sound map. What this means is writing out the numeric outline of the song, notating the counts of the music. Is it 4/4 time and can be counted in 8 counts? Is the music ¾ waltz or is it 6/8 time? How will you count the song out for your dancers? A sound map is a basic tool for a beginning choreographer as having an intimate understanding of this numeric metered structure of your music is vital for your success as a choreographer. Very move should have a count. Some choreographers may create movement using lyric formulation form using the lyrics instead of counts. But beware that not all dancers performing your vision will feel the movement as you do… so best practices in choreographic ventures is to notate all counts, and have these counts coincide the lyrics you wish to emphasize.

Definition: Sound Map

A numeric outline of the song, notating the counts of the music; a written or diagramed numeric tool for a choreographer to break down the counts of a song.

Storyboard Choreography

Another basic tool for choreographers is to create an aerial visual of the different stage formations, transitions, and patterns to which you wish to assign your dancers. Sketches of movement patterns is called Storyboard Choreography. Want a circle formation that flows into a long diagonal? Notate this on a storyboard. (see Figure 9.6) Are you wondering how to transition 11 dancers from a cluster to an organized series of lines… but wondering what to do with the odd number of dancers? Map it out on a storyboard! (see Figure 9.7) Create symbols that represent various groupings for dancer assignments such as X, O, T, or some other shape that makes sense to you. Some choreographers even use stick figures! Such choreographic formation assignations are what curates a work from amateur movement exploration to professional danced diagraming. When a choreographer pre-plans movement using this diagrammatic device, an aerial visual of the stage with plotting of dancer formations makes explaining easy when in front of your dancers. Storyboarding your choreography along with corresponding metric timing is immensely useful to keep you on track and organized as a choreographer.

Definition: Storyboard Choreography

A is a series of sequentially ordered drawings that are a visual representation of a choreographed dance sequence or entire work. Storyboard choreography breaks down the action into individual visual panels and might include notations about timing, lyric cues, camera direction, cues or dialogue, or other pertinent details to indicate choreographic action. It sketches out how a dance will go, frame by frame.

Figure 9.6. The storyboard of a triangle formation to a diagonal, that then flows to a circle formation, then to lines or cluster groupings should be pre-planned to ensure flow. Worth, D. (2024). Storyboard choreography example. Self-Supplied.

Figure 9.7. A typical “Latin formation” performed by the Aachener ATSC Blau-Silber C-Team in Germany, required storyboarding in order to achieve the perfectly paired diagonal line and directional angles. Pre-planning choreography is always the mark of a professional. (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/F...team_2007).jpg)