Choreography for Beginners Part 1

      Hey guys! This weekend's (and next weekend's) post is a little different... It's not really about dancing, so much as choreographing.    
      This is actually something that (as a dancer) you'll run into a lot. most college and high school programs require some sort of choreography unit, whether you end up doing yours or someone else's. At my school, our dance program had a "What inspires you?" project, and we were required to write about the topic, choreograph a minimum 1:30 minute solo or duet, and perform it for the class.
   I was pretty intimidated when my teacher first gave us the assignment. I love to make up combinations with my friends and challenge myself with phrases that shouldn't really flow well together, but this was different. I was alone, and it was graded. I started by choosing my music. That wasn;t as hard as I thought it would be, I already had made a combo to "Listen" by Beyonce (from the movie Dreamgirls) so I just stuck with that one. Unfortunately, however....

Courtesy of Thanks-To-Dance Tumblr

     I got started. We had class-time to work on our pieces, and I chose to do mine as a solo, so I could practice at home, too. Honestly, the hardest part was not making the routine too difficult for me to do at the speed f the song. It isn't really fast, but packing too many movements could get complicated. I eventually completed the assignment, but one thing that I learned this year is that a piece is never really "done."
    I must have performed this thing 7-8 times this year, and every time I did it, something changed. There was a particularly challenging series of turns at the very end of the piece. The first time I did t, it went exactly as planned. The second time, I slipped and did a death-drop flat on my back in the middle of the stage. The third time, I couldn't hear the music over the applause (I know, right?) so I finished about 8 counts after the music ended and improv-ed the entire turn sequence. The very last time, the stage was too slippery for me to come out the way I wanted, so I planned on doing another kind-of knee-drop fall out of them. I started falling out of my turns before the phrase was over, so I jumped/fell too soon, had to roll out of it, and improv my walks off-stage.
     And those were just the mishaps that I remember.  :)  


There is more choreography chaos to come, meanwhile, enjoy this post, and I'll see if I can surprise you with a video later on this week. Don't forget to share and subscribe!
Savanna