Choreography pt. 3

Alright folks! Home stretch!

Ready to go and finish what we started? Alright! Let's do it and learn to choreograph!

The Process:

Dun Dun Dun! It's here! No need to fear though! It's not as scary as it sounds! This is a pretty straight forward process that is not too confusing. The main part here is keeping all the information from the pre-planing in your head once you actually start dancing. Your dance will of course evolve and diverge from what you originally thought your dance would look like, but keep in mind your goals here: What is your purpose? What are you trying to say? Does your dance accomplish that?

Let's take it step by step and figuring it out!

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1. It's time to use that notebook of yours! Start off by playing your song and counting how many total eight counts are in either the whole song or the cut part of the song you are choreographing to. Now take your eight counts on your lined paper and on the first line, write across the line 1, 2, 3, 4,. . . ect. all the way to 8. They should all be on one line, but space them out enough so that you have enough room in between them. Skip a line underneath them and then write the next eight count on that line. Continue this for the total amount of eight counts that you have; write an eight count, skip a line. Lets say you have 27 eight counts (about a standard 1.5 min song at a steady pace), then you would have 27 lines of 1-8 written across, each with a space in between, for a total of 54 lines.

2. Now that you have all of the counts written out. Take the first line, this corresponds to the first eight count of your song as you have probably guessed. Each count represents a movement of the dance. Above each count, write what the movement. Ex: If you are doing a double turn. Count 1-2 would be step out, 3-4 prep, turn 5-6, down 7-8. I also like to draw little stick figures to accompany the description and count so that even if something doesn't have an official name, I will know what I mean :)

3. After you have done all your free-styling ( check post pt. 2 if you have no idea what I'm talking about), decide on what dance material you are going to use for your dance. You don't actually have to start at the beginning of the dance either. If you have no idea what you are going to do with the beginning, don't worry start with a part of the song that you are confident in. I do highly recommend sectioning the song off into sections that either sound alike or are in the same formation. This will make it easier for you visually and make it easier to teach because each section will have a cohesive feel (also you can break it up into the intro of the song, chorus, bridge, ect.)

Continue this process of breaking down the song so that you can add the dance elements to it without it being overwhelming. It might seem like a lot now and seem a little tedious but just try it to start out and once you get more confident you can skip some of the steps, like writing out each individual count. The journal below only shows the whole eight count rather than each individual count!

There are many different styles to writing down choreography. Some styles make sense to some people and not any sense at all to others, just like dance. Experiment and try different styles to see what works best for you! There is not a wrong way to do this, but it is a good idea to keep your work neat ;)

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Thanks for hanging on for so long for this series guys! It was a lot to take in but choreography is serious business! (jk it's supposed to be fun) I hope ya'll enjoyed this 3 part post and of course tell me all your comments, concerns, and questions in the forum!