Choreography Month Week 4: Teaching the Choreography
Welcome to the Casual Dance Teachers podcast. This is your host, Maia, and I'm back with the final week of choreography month. We've been talking all month long about different ways to come up with material for fresh and innovative choreography. And today, we are going to talk about finalizing that and actually teaching the choreography to your students. Let's talk about it.
Maia:Welcome back, my friends. As I mentioned, you have landed on an episode that is kind of wrapping up a whole session I've done about choreography. So the last 3 weeks, I've been talking about coming up with choreography for your dance students. If you missed those episodes, I definitely recommend that you go back and listen to them. And I have an extra bonus episode coming out next week with a very special guest, so don't miss that.
Maia:But this is kind of wrapping up my input about choreography, envisioning that you're at the point where you have a dance, maybe not necessarily completed, but you're at the point where you're ready to start teaching your students the podcast. That one is about mapping out your curriculum for the dance season, and I reference that episode a lot because I think it speaks a lot to the way that I like to stay organized and present information as a dance teacher. And today is really no exception because I like to step into the classroom with a mapped out plan of how I'm going to teach choreography for a new piece for my students. Remember that the goal when teaching choreography to students is that they continue to grow both as artists and as dancers with their technical training, their conditioning, and practicing all of the skills that they've learned throughout the year. And the choreography just enhances that.
Maia:It allows them to practice that. It allows them to show the audience what they've learned as opposed to a concert dance where you're fully just trying to portray your artistic vision. I believe that if you step into the classroom and just start to create on your students, it limits the amount of time that you can really focus on helping them grow from a technical standpoint. Because you might be going back and changing things artistically, but leaving behind those more important parts of the training for the students. That's why it's so important to me to map it out ahead of time.
Maia:Another thing that you'll learn about me in the very first episode of the podcast, but I'll let you know if you haven't listened to the podcast before. I am very old fashioned in the sense that I write just about everything down on just lined notebook paper. I have binders. I organize them by class. You can go way back and find my choreography, my classroom notes, my curriculums, all sorts of things written down on paper.
Maia:And that just helps me to keep my own thoughts organized and also maintain documentation of what I've done in the past and how my work has evolved, and I like to have everything on paper. So I'm gonna talk about the system from the point of view of using a pencil and paper. I also think that this system is very adaptable that you could use Google Docs. You could use video and voice notes. I'm sure there's apps out there.
Maia:If you use an app of some sort that you really like for documenting choreography, I would love to hear that. If you could hop in the casual dance teachers network on Facebook and share that with us, I'd be very, very curious to hear about any apps or other digital resources that you use. For me, paper and pencil. Okay? That's budget friendly, easy peasy.
Maia:That's what I like to stick with. I might not have every step written down, but at the very least, what I'll have on paper is time stamps that I find in the music. Any area where the music changes, there's a musical cue, or something in the choreography shifts, I'll write down the time stamps so I can easily go back and practice that material from that point and know where in the music that happens. So I'll write my time stamps in the left hand column of the lined notebook paper, and then, of course, on the actual paper itself, I'm writing down either specific steps. In some cases, I do that, especially if it's a more beginner class, young students that are doing simpler steps.
Maia:It's easier to just write down the steps that they're doing. More advanced classes, I'm typically writing down the general idea, or I might write down some really crazy coded language that no one but me would understand. Like at 2 minutes and 25 seconds into the music, they do the floppy fish combination. But to me, I know what that means. When I first go through and choreograph and notate the choreography that I'm coming up with, I might only time stamp every 30 seconds or even a whole minute.
Maia:Once I get to the point where I'm preparing to teach the choreography, I do typically go in and time stamp a lot. I'll write down a lot of different time cues because it makes it easier for me to find the music quickly when I have the students practicing, so I'm not fumbling around trying to find the music because I find that the faster I can move through having them do the dance, having them find where they are in the dance and start from that spot, the less likely I am to lose their focus and their energy. The other thing, and I'll get to this more in a minute, is that I have a tendency to try to push a lot of choreography out if I'm just in that artistic mode. If I'm just in it for the choreography and trying to see my vision come to life, what I'll naturally gravitate towards is, okay. Let's do this.
Maia:Let's do this. Let's do this. Let's try this. Let's see it this way. Let's do this.
Maia:If I have the time stamps and I look at my notes and I see that, it gives me a visual cue of, okay. After you've taught this section, you need to cut it off and just work on it. So I'll get into that a little bit more in a second, but I make the notes on the piece of paper. I have some musical cues already written down. And before I go to the classroom and start working with my students, I go through and write down as many musical cues as I can.
Maia:I would say every 10 to 20 seconds to actually have some kind of cue written in the margin that you can reference so that you don't bite off more than you can chew. The third thing I do from a preparatory standpoint is actually take each time stamped section. So if it's a 3 minute dance and you're time stamping every 10 seconds, essentially you have 24 different segments of the dance broken down. I will look at my calendar of how many weeks of class I have before the recital or before dress rehearsal week, or maybe I'll give myself a few weeks buffer, and I will actually assign a week to each segment of the dance. This is another way that I prevent myself from going into the classroom and trying to push out too much choreography too fast without giving the students the opportunity to really process, work on the artistry, work on little technical things, and make sure I'm not just saying these are the steps you do this, this, and this.
Maia:Some weeks you might be able to cover more material. Let's say 30 seconds worth of material, something that's familiar to them, or something that's a little bit easier for them. And other weeks, you might just work on 18 count. But if you look at it ahead of time, it helps you to think ahead and know which segments you're going to want to work on super slow and technical and only teach 8 counts that week, and which weeks you're going to want to push out more steps so that you can then move forward into the other sections. When I do this and I give myself a couple weeks of buffer, it also helps me, and I'm sure you've put together by now that I am a visual learner.
Maia:I like to have that visual aid to show me on paper that if a student is absent 1 week, there is that time for them to come in and get caught up and relearn. Sometimes 3 or 4 students are absent, and you were planning on working on something that required all the students to be there that week. You can then look at your notes, find another section that might be easier for them to catch up on, or go and do a cleaning or some technical work on a section that you've already learned with the students that are there. It takes a little bit of that anxiety out of not knowing, oh my gosh, am I gonna have enough time to teach everyone all the material? If students are absent, how am I going to make up for that?
Maia:It gives me much more peace of mind of how I'm going to go through and teach the material. Another thing that I wanna mention is that I tend not to teach my recital choreography exactly in chronological order from beginning to end. That's another thing that I did in the past as a less experienced teacher. And over time, I've realized that that's not the best way for my students to absorb it. So now when I'm assigning those weeks, I don't just start at the beginning and say week 1, first 8 count.
Maia:Week 2, the next couple 8 counts, etcetera, etcetera. What I actually do is look at what material is going to need the most work and start with that. I guess, let me clarify because that might not be a 100% true all of the time. So what I just said is I teach the segments that need the most work first. That's generally true if there is a segment that I think is going to be really technically technically challenging for the students, and they all do that section, they all have to do those steps or know those steps, then yes.
Maia:I will go right in and start with the harder part. A, that just gives you the most time to work on that. Right? So that's the first thing. B, the nice thing was starting with that and then having more I don't wanna say easier, but material that might come a little more naturally to them or that they might be more technically adept at is that sometimes students can feel very down about material that they're not as confident with.
Maia:When they're practicing for the recital, they're picturing themselves on stage performing for all of their loved ones. And if they're doing something that they don't feel super confident about, it might be harder for them to perform it well. It might be harder for them to go full out and have big smiles. They might start feeling down about it and not as excited about the dance, but if you start in these tiny, tiny little chunks of trickier material, And then if you see that little glimmer that a student is getting a little bit down or a little bit demotivated by the challenge, you can quickly change gears and say, okay, let's learn an 8 count that either they've done in class before. So it's familiar and it's just review, or a step that the students really like.
Maia:I have a lot of students that tend to love grand allegro in ballet classes. I have a lot of students in my modern classes that love anything with an inversion. Cartwheels and rolls and getting weight in their hands, on their heads and shoulders and their backs and things like that. My dancers tend to like to move fast, so I might start by teaching them a slower section. And then if I feel that they're getting a little bit bored, maybe I'm losing some of that attention and excitement, I quickly switch to a fast section.
Maia:So when I have that back and forth, I can keep the dancers' attention and motivation going no matter what their mood is, or how they're feeling that day, or whatever. As opposed to if I just went chronologically through the dance, a lot of times the music will kinda start a little bit slower, pick up in the middle, and then slow down again. So it would be harder to control the pace of each individual class. Going back to some of the previous episodes within this choreography unit that I've been doing, you probably know that I've been talking about creating a central motif, which can be movement that you've used in class before, variations of it, or something totally new. Whether that motif is really challenging for the dancers or not, you might wanna also start by just teaching that central motif first before you teach anything else, especially because and if the motif comes back multiple times throughout the dance.
Maia:Generally, if you have a motif even if it's changed up quite a bit every time the audience sees it, so they might not even recognize it because you've changed the arms, the way they're facing, the tempo, and all of that. To the dancers, the core elements of that motif might come back multiple times throughout the dance. And especially when you're working with dancers that are advanced enough that they're not all doing the same thing all the time. You know, the 45 year olds typically are not going to be doing many, many different variations on a motif. But teen dancers who have some experience might be broken up into several different groups that are all dancing different steps at the same time. If I teach the If m the core motif first, then a, from a choreography standpoint, I've mentioned this in the previous episodes, I can give them little assignments on the side and say, hey. Why don't you play around with doing this, this, and this choreographic device, apply that to the motif. Whether or not you end up using that in the dance, then you're sure to keep all dancers engaged at all times. Because when you get to that point where different dancers are learning different steps, that's another area where I run into sometimes losing a little bit of the attention of the dancers. So to maintain that, I'll teach them all the motif or review the motif if it's something they're somewhat familiar with for the 1st week of class, let's say.
Maia:Then the next week we come in, I assign groups to a certain choreographic device, and say "Work on the motif through that lens while I work with this group." I teach that group their steps, their spacing, their placement. Then I say, okay, now you guys have to work on that. Clean it up. Add all of your artistry to it.
Maia:Layer on your flare and your performance quality, and I'm gonna grab this other group and work with them, or this individual dancer. I always want all dancers moving at all times. So rather than go beginning to end of the dance, I'll take out the couple of sections that they do in unison and teach that for the 1st few weeks, and then move into a few weeks of working with smaller groups or individuals on what they do individually. And that way, all the other dancers while I'm working 1 on 1 or a couple dancers on 1 have something to do, have something to work on. It's very easy for me to assign them work and keep an eye to make sure that they're not just in the corner gabbing, but they're actually working, dancing, moving their bodies, and improving their skills as a dancer in addition to the choreography.
Maia:So finally, with this system, when you have it broken down into these really small manageable bite sized chunks, you're only doing a few counts , 8 max per week in your class. This gives you the space as a teacher to add in those technical exercises, conditioning exercises, to add in sometimes games or brain breaks. If you find that your dancers are really challenged by the choreography, and they just need a break to do something totally just for fun, you have the space to do this because you're not going, oh, no. No. No.
Maia:We have to push more choreography out. Back when I wasn't as experienced and I didn't really know what I was doing as a teacher, I'd push a bunch of choreography out really fast, and I'd say, okay. We'll go back and clean it and work on the technique later. That'll be fine. At least then they'll know it, and they can practice it.
Maia:But then for the first, let's say, 4 weeks that they were learning that choreography, they were practicing it wrong. They were practicing it with weaker technique. So then when I went back to clean it after it was already all learned super fast, I was having to fix corrections that were built into their muscle memory, and that they had been practicing. That really doesn't work for me. That's why I use this system now, and I don't go in order, but I go in the order that's logical for the technical work that my dancers need as students.
Maia:I'm sure you know by now from listening to me for those past 4 weeks that I could literally go on for hours and hours about choreography. I am obsessed with it. I love teaching other people about it. I love teaching my students about the process. So if you have any other questions, of course, if you have anything to add or you disagree with the way that I do things or you feel like I missed some big components of choreography and didn't even talk about them over the past 4 weeks, hit me up in the Casual Dance Teachers Network on Facebook.
Maia:That's why I have the group there. I want the feedback. I want to hear from all of you. So let me know what you thought. If there's anything else you wanna hear about or debate me on or whatever it is.
Maia:Thank you so much for sticking with me through these choreography episodes because it's been a ton of fun to record and share my thoughts with all of you. I also wanna thank GB mystical again for my theme music. This music always makes me wanna get up and dance, so thank you for providing that. And I have an excellent quote to close this out from one of my favorite dancers and inspirations, Jacques d'Amboise. Enjoy the process of learning to dance.
Maia:The process of our profession, and not its final achievement is the heart and soul of dance.
