The Casual Dance Teacher's Podcast

Welcome back to the Casual Dance Teachers podcast. This is Maia, and we're on week three of Choreography Month. Today, I'm going to be talking about working on spacing and transitions between different formations once you already have the theme and the movement for your piece set. Let's talk about it. Welcome back to week three of Choreography Month. And if you didn't know that this was Choreography Month, I certainly encourage you to go back and listen to the previous two episodes, which will tell you about how to determine a theme for your dance, choose music, come up with movement that fits the theme or the concept for the piece. And now it's time to get into the formations, the spacing, where your dancers are going to be in the space and on the stage.

And at this point, if you have listened to the previous two episodes, you might realize that I have said this in every episode, but I'm talking about choreographing for a recital piece. I'm talking about a short form piece of choreography and something that's built around the students. So the primary concern, of course, when I'm spacing out a dance for my students is that all of them feel served, all of them feel seen, that I am highlighting every single student. No one's getting covered up. Nobody's being featured more prominently than another dancer. So, that's kind of my primary concern spacing wise, but I still want to be creative and have fun with it and serve the concept of the dance.

So, I'm going to talk about some different tools and kind of perspectives with which I approach this to make sure that I'm not falling into the rut of just kind of choosing certain formations and putting the dancers in those same formations over and over again in different dances. As far as making sure that you're highlighting all of your dancers. You want to take height into consideration. You don't want to always have your shortest dancers in the front and taller dancers in the back because taller dancers are going to really feel upset that they don't ever get to dance in the front, but you want to change it up so that it always looks balanced on the stage with the heights of the dancers, and that dancers aren't being covered up.

You also want to think about the dancers in your class that have the best spatial awareness. So not always necessarily the best dancers, so to speak, from a technical standpoint, but dancers that have good spatial awareness and are able to sense the other bodies around them, maintain formations, not travel too much or too little when doing certain steps are the dancers that you're going to want maybe front and center. So other dancers can watch off of them and take their spacing off of them, or maybe on the outside ends of a formation to make sure that other dancers don't pass them who might not have the best spatial awareness, no matter how you're working the spacing of the dancers on stage.

Make sure every dancer has her moment, make sure there's not someone that's living front and center, and another dancer who might be stuck in the back for the majority of the dance. Those are the practical considerations. But now is where I'll talk more about the artistic considerations that go into this. And this is another reason why I stressed so strongly in the first week of Choreography Month. It is absolutely imperative, in my opinion, to have some sort of theme or concept to the dance that you're structuring everything around. Because if you've chosen a certain character or a certain story to the dance, you'll probably want the primary focus at all times to be the individual dancers and the acting and the portrayal of that character or of that story.

In that case, the formations and the transitions between formations probably are not as important as how they are. They are done how they are danced to convey the story to the audience. I'm thinking of a dance that I did, it was like the very tail end of COVID, we were able to get into the auditorium, but we had, I think it was just a very limited audience so that everyone could maintain social distancing. The dancers were masked, and they had to still stay six feet apart. Luckily, I knew that going into it. So when I was choreographing the dances, I wasn't choreographing them all, you know, rushing and getting right up on top of each other. But I choreographed this dance, where every dancer was portraying her own personal social isolation, sort of emotional isolation.

And we played around a lot with dancers starting to approach each other. And when they got to that six foot mark, they had to then back up and without ever changing formations. And this was a more advanced class. So with a younger class, you might expect them not to change. Formations much, but these were dancers that had the ability to play around with spacing a lot. But without ever once changing formation, there was so much interaction between the dancers, without them touching without them ever getting closer than six feet apart. And the most important thing throughout that was not okay, you're going from point A to point B. It was what is the emotional impetus that's drawing you towards and away from the other dancer?

That's drawing you into the corner of this little box that you're relegated to, and then back into the center. And we had a lot of fun with that. And that was another favorite of mine that I really enjoyed. So those are the kinds of circumstances I'm thinking of where I wasn't thinking at all about the placement of the bodies in space, because I kind of just gave them each a six foot square and kept them in there. But I was thinking about how they were interacting within that space. On the flip side, if you're doing a dance, you're going to be able to do a lot of different things. So if a dance does not have a story, if it doesn't have a specific emotional theme, or narrative theme, which is completely fine, you might want to focus more on visually what different formations will look like, and almost extract the personality from the dancers.

So they become more like objects. And it's almost like just placing chess pieces on a board. What will it look like when they do this movement in this formation? What will it look like when they do it in this formation? Visually? What are you giving? The audience that plays into the visual theme that you're portraying, or the musical theme that you're portraying? And it's all about creating very clean, very orderly lines and shapes or creating chaos, but you're the one that's orchestrating it. And what does that look like? And you can have a lot of fun with a more practical approach. But it's important to know ahead of time, are you taking that practical approach where the dancers are more of objects moving in the space?

Or are you taking a very personal approach where the dancers are portraying certain people, certain characters, or certain feelings? In my own choreography, I've been heavily influenced by the time that I spent studying abroad in Ghana when I was in college, because I was able to learn about all the different meanings of certain formations in traditional West African dance. For example, dances performed in a circle are generally about an entire community coming together. And they're celebratory, they're celebrating togetherness. But if you see a dance that's performed in a line, that's maybe snaking around with the dancer staying in that line, that's typically representing just the men from a community going out on a hunt, there's some danger, some intrigue to it, and it's very different than a dance that's done in a circle.

And that's really important because in the West African tradition, those dances started out as a form of narrative. That's how storytelling is. That's how stories were told. That's how culture was passed on. That's how history was conveyed from one generation to the next. Luckily for us, two great pioneers of the modern dance movement in West Africa, Nketiah and Opoku, saw the benefits of codifying the language and the systems of traditional Ghanaian dance and drumming, and they essentially laid the groundwork for the contemporary Ghanaian dance scene, where choreographers are still using those traditional formations to convey the theme of the dance or tell the audience that there is a story that maybe is about community or about hunting or something with more tension, but they'll play around with coming in and out of those formations.

They'll tell contemporary stories. So maybe they're not hunting for animals, but they're hunting for wealth. They're hunting for a great job, but they're still using those traditions to infuse the traditional African culture with the contemporary stories that they have to tell. So. So for me, even though currently I don't teach a West African dance class, I have taught some classes in the past where I try to stay really, really true to the traditional roots that I study, just so I'm not overstepping the bounds of what I know and what I learned in my time there. But there's still the influence in my mind that formations and shapes and the way that we move together on the stage can portray a lot of different things to different cultures.

And how can I play around with that? And what other cultures can I explore to see if maybe the way that my dancers are arranged on stage or are moving through the space might have a meaning that I never even thought about. So, I love to kind of delve into how are the bodies actually kind of writing a story through the way that they're arranged, the way that they're moving, the way that they're positioned and all of that. I don't know if that helps you. I just thought it was really exciting to talk about because it is a big influence in my own work.

And while I'm talking about teaching preschoolers, I have a rule of thumb. And this is based on absolutely nothing, except my own opinion. So like, there's no scientific evidence that this is true. But as a general rule of thumb, I think that dancers can basically handle changing formation in their dance the same number of times as their age. So a three-year-old, you're putting them on the stage in a spot, let them focus on the steps, the max number of times that you want to take them out of that spot to go to a new spot is going to be three, definitely not more than that. Again, you want everyone to be featured. So you don't want anyone stuck in the back, but you don't want to have a moving all around the stage because they are just learning spatial awareness.

And we're talking spatial awareness of their own bodies, let alone how they're interacting with each other. And so I think that's a really important rule of thumb. Interacting with other bodies in space and being on a stage with light shining on them and all of that. Max three, I would say if there are three, if there are four, maybe they can handle four transitions. If there are 14, now we can handle about 14 transitions. Again, this is just my opinion. But who wants to see 14 formations where the dancers dance around in one spot, go to a new formation, dance around again in another spot 14 times, especially in a short dance, like most recital dances are around 14. That would probably not be very fun to watch.

So this is the age where you can start to get away from quote unquote formations, and more into thinking about how are the dancers interacting with the movement in this space, different dancers are moving to different places at different times. They're traveling, they're moving, they're interacting, they are not just popped into a spot on the floor, do some steps there, go to another spot, do some steps there. One of my biggest pet peeves when I'm watching dance is when the dancers are dancing, dancing, dancing. And then they just all of a sudden run to a final pose. And then the dance ends with them in a pose. It's like, why? Why did they go there? That's really what choreography is to me is just asking, why? Why do I want to go here?

Why do I want to do this? Even for the little ones, it's good to have a why. That should really tell you where the dancers should be on stage and how they're going to get there. Now I get stuck all the time. So it's not like every dance, it just makes sense in my head where the dancers should go, what formations make sense with the theme of their dance. So I'm all about throwing different chance exercises in to come up with new formation spacing transitions from place to place. I do that all the time. And then I figure out the why after. And sometimes it takes some explaining for the dancers too. I think I've done a nice job. I'll toot my own horn for one second with some dancers that have been with me for a few years now, that they're at the point where they will ask me why. So if they don't understand why they're doing a move a certain way, or why they're going to a certain spot, they'll ask me because they like to be informed dancers and to be dancing from a place of understanding. So I'm pretty excited about that. But that doesn't mean that the meaning always has to come first. Sometimes you can come up with the movement, come up with a transition, come up with a formation, and then we'll figure out the why later. I love throwing in some chance dance, I will draw a squiggle on a piece of paper. And that's the new pathway that a dancer has to follow to their next spot. Or maybe if they're dancing in a line, they'll all squiggle right around in a line or they'll start in a squiggle and branch off into a new shape. Maybe I'll have every individual dancer get a piece of paper and a pen, draw their own squiggle, and then I'll say, 'Okay, you know, this combination that we've been working on, you are now going to do that combination along the pathway of the squiggle that you drew. Maybe when they're doing that, they'll crash into each other because they have these intersecting squiggles now. So you can set some parameters or rules. For example, if you are going to crash into another dancer, one of you has to go low. One of you has to go high and you have to figure out how to get over the other dancer. Maybe you have to make eye contact and spin around each other without touching. Or maybe you want to go fast, do the combination really fast along your squiggle. But if you get close to someone, go to slow mo until you get past them. This of course references some of the choreographic devices that we talked about in last week's episodes, you can always go back there. And I also give you some books that I wrote about this. So if you're interested in learning more about this, lots and lots of ideas on choreographic devices and different exercises you can do to change up your choreography. But you can't do that for formations and transitions to just set some arbitrary rules.

Keep what you like, toss what you don't like and find out the why as you go. I have 100% drawn shapes on a piece of paper like a triangle, a circle, a squiggle, a couple of dots, thrown them in a hat and drawn them out of the hat. And those were the formations that I used. And I made it my challenge to come up with innovative transitions from one formation to another. That would be an example of a dance that did not have a theme other than just trying to come up with cool use of space and shape and form. And it turned out great. I really enjoyed it. So I'm all about that. I'm also all about character. So if there's a shape that's relevant to a dancer's character, or the theme that you're trying to portray, I'm all about that.

So if there's a shape that's relevant to a dancer's character, maybe it's a dance about love and you put the dancers in a heart formation. If you're doing a dance about Alice in Wonderland, you're probably not going to want the dancers to do a lot of straight lines like performing a combination straight across the stage because Alice had a very weird and wandering pathway through Wonderland. So you're going to want the movement to be wandering all around the stage. Those are the types of things to keep in mind. At the end of the day, you're going to want the dancers to be wandering all around the stage. So you're going It's all about the students. Yes, we love to be creative. We love to put our own flair and give the audience a really great experience.

But the audience tends to be there for a certain student, and they want to see their students shine. So first and foremost, get every single one of your students front and center, or at least featured in some way. You never ever want a student to feel like, 'Oh, man, I must not be that good.' Because I really am not ever in the front in this dance. I'm really never featured in this dance. So and so must be such a better dancer than me because he or she is always front and center. That's not fun. You can do that all day long in choreography that's not about the students, find a different venue for it, right?

So we want all the students to feel seen, we want them to feel special, we want them to have their moment. And then we layer on all of these other artistic tricks on top of that. Next week, we are going to talk about how you actually teach the choreography. So we are just about done with filling out your entire dance start to finish, having that set. And now we're going to talk about teaching. So we have some fun themes coming up still within choreography month. I want to talk to you more in the casual Dance Teachers Network on Facebook. So make sure to talk to me there. As always, thank you to GB mystical for my theme music. Absolutely love it. Remember to always be looking for fun music from your local musician friends. And today's closing quote is from J.H. Kwabena Nketiah, one of the great pioneers of the modern African dance movement. Nketiah is a musician, musicologist, and wrote about African music. But because in the African culture, the music and the dance are almost one in the same, they are so bound. I thought that this was still a very relevant and beautiful quote to share. The study of African music is a study at once of unity and diversity.