Choreographic Techniques By: Sedric Yang

Have you ever wondered how people are able to carry out such excellent dance routines? The answer to that is choreography. “What’s that” you say? Well, choreography is defined as the art of creating and arranging dances; the word itself having been derived from the Greek words χορεία, meaning “circular dance”, and γραφή, meaning “writing”.

In my experience, I’ve struggled quite a bit with making dance routines, but the use of some basic choreographic techniques managed to alleviate some of the difficulty I have with making these things.

Some of the more basic choreographic techniques involved in dancing include stage directions, symmetry, and dynamics (or tempo). Stage directions are basically just positioning. The stage can be divided into nine areas: Upstage left, upstage center, upstage right, left center, center, right center, downstage left, downstage center, and downstage right. These positions or areas are usually used to indicate where the dancers should be at any given point in the routine. Symmetry is a technique to make the routine, well, symmetrical. Mirrored movements, positions, and actions are all part of the symmetry technique. Dynamics or tempo dictates how fast the dance moves are to be carried out. In music, tempo is how fast the notes are played. In dance, it’s how fast the dancers will dance. Dances like the tango are often slower than, say, flamenco, which is in turn slower than, say, river dancing. The main difference (apart from the obvious difference in style and flair) is tempo.

So remember: if ever you’re trying to come up with a dance routine and you need a little help with choreography, then take a look at some of these techniques.

Have a good day.