Choreography - Movement of the Mind

Ever watch those amazing dance videos and wonder how in the world someone thought of that crazy move? How they thought to make that formation? How it just seems impossible for it to be humanly possible to create something that beautiful??

Never fear! If that's even been you and you just don't even know where to start to begin choreographing a piece, these are some tips to get you kick started onto your journey to incredible choreography :)

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As a disclaimer, these tips obviously aren't going to magically make everyone an award winning choreographer and sometimes people just aren't meant to do certain things i.e choreograph. These tips are however meant to make it easier for you to find a process to creating a dance. This will be a 2-part post as the choreography process consist of two stages: pre-planning and actually setting the dance into motion. This post will be about the pre-planning, which is a critical step, but if you just want to get into skip to the second post :)

Before actually getting into the dancing part it is really helpful to brainstorm a few things to add direction to your dance so that you don't get lost within the piece itself.

Some of these things include:

- Music : I know this one seems kind of obvious, but depending on how you start your choreography process will determine if the dance is dependent on the music or if the music matches the idea of the dance. What I mean by this is if you plan on doing a certain style of dance, like jazz, and then find a song that fits the jazzy style or you pick a song you want to choreograph to and then pick the style and other elements based off of what the song already offers. I recommend picking the music first so that it is easier to build off of later, rather than brainstorm a dance style, but this is completely up to you and your situation.

- Style : What style of dance do you plan on doing? Contemporary? Hip-Hop? Or maybe a fusion between the two styles? Really think about what style the music reflects and what style would be easiest to choreograph for this piece.

- Emotion : What emotions does the song invoke in you? Happy, sad, joyful, energetic, angry; there are so many different ways to interpret a song so make sure that this is true to your own understanding of the song and what it means to you. Using your own feelings will make the piece feel more authentic and everyone know that people value what's real.

- Purpose : This one is similar to emotion, but it's used to make you think of the reason why you are choreographing. Is there a story behind your dance? A view or message you are trying to get across? Keep this in mind because letting your audience think about what you have just done gives the choreography depth, making it more likely to stay with the viewer later. *Note on this: I am not saying that every piece has to have some crazy deep meaning about why we are here on earth. This can be as simple as wanting to make people smile and share in your joy :)

- Groups : This is really easy to figure out. Just ask yourself how many people are going to be involved in your dance then BAM! You got you're groups to create the formations. Keep in mind how you can utilize the space with the number of people you are choreographing for. Creating a dance for a solo requires different thought than that of a twenty person team.

The rest of the process will be covered in the next post so be on the look out! As always please leave any comments, questions, or tips of your own!

This is a link to Steezy, which is another dancer related blog that also has a lot of great tools! Check 'em out!

https://blog.steezy.co/15-choreography-tips-to-help-you-make-your-best-pieces/