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Teaching Dance Improvisation

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dancer on stage

by Janet Neidhardt

Teaching students how to improvise seems to be a bit of an oxymoron sometimes. How do you teach students to think in the moment and not plan their movements out but still make it look interesting? I try to teach improvisation tools much like I teach choreography tools. I assign short studies with specific guidelines and emphasize making purposeful choices. The tools we discuss should help them make educated, in the moment decisions that add to an improvisation.

I always have some students watch while others dance so that we can have discussion about what was aesthetically pleasing to us and discover the improvisation tools together. Some tools my students have come up with recently are: moments of contrast catch the eye for example different levels, dramatic changes in timing, people crossing each others’ pathways, and moments of unison can be strong after chaos.

When I first introduce improvisation I give my students two rules: [Read more…]

Choreography: When is My Dance Done?

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double edge theatre
“The Grand Parade” by the Double Edge Theatre, Photo by Maria Baranova

by Lauren Warnecke, MS

So you’ve managed to make a dance.  How do you know when it’s really finished?  When your music runs out?  After about 20 minutes?  When you run out of “moves”?

Rule number one in finishing a dance is a narrative arch.  This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to tell a linear story, but each dance must have a clear beginning, middle, and end.  Where you choose to place arches within these sections is largely up to you, but they are important for guiding your audience along the journey.

Once your journey is up, so is your dance, but choreographers often find themselves dissatisfied and wondering if the dance is, in fact, finished. The Grand Parade, created and performed by Double Edge Theatre at The Dance Center of Columbia College last Saturday is a piece with a strong narrative and massive production elements that include a fury of projections, mannequins, rigging for aerial circus arts, and perhaps a few hundred props.  Yet, even with all these things going on, Double Edge’s history of the 20th Century in 55 minutes is a work they insist is not yet done.  Seeing The Grand Parade reinforced my view that no work is ever, really, done.

A colleague of mine once said of her work, “It’s not done, but I’m done with it.”  She viewed a performance as a slightly more formal Works-in-Progress showing… with fancier lights.

I think her point speaks to the idea that dance is a living, evolving art form.  Dances have a transient nature that is unlike, say, visual art.  The Sistine Chapel will always be the Sistine Chapel, but Peptipa’s choreography will be ever changing to a certain degree based on the venue, the dancers, tempo choices, costume, etc.

On a more contemporary note, sometimes it is only through live performance that you truly learn about a piece and see what it needs.  You might figure out that your ending is really awkward and the audience doesn’t know when to clap.  Or you might discover that you want the whole thing to be presented in reverse order to what it is.  The stage is a beautiful place to discover these things, but that’s not to say that everything is stage-worthy…

Ultimately, you’re asking patrons to pay money to watch your product.  Most people wouldn’t fork over $12 to see an unfinished movie, and besides, that’s what free or inexpensive WIPs are for.  But given the inevitable stages of development a dance undergoes, it may need to be presented multiple times, in multiple iterations.  Each iteration that takes to the stage, however, should a finished quality that is worth paying for.  These are a few things I look for in a “finished” dance: [Read more…]

Beginner’s Guide to Choreography

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by Lauren Warnecke

Leslie Werle of The Dance Team, photo by Kelly Rose

Perhaps you’ve wanted to try your hand at making dances and never had the chutzpah to get started.  You’re not alone, but choreography is an art, a skill, and a trade that is sometimes harder than you might think.  You’ll laugh; you’ll cry.  You’ll have triumphs and failures, but like anything else, making dances requires practice.  Assuming that you’ve already set aside the time and resources, and have space and dancers to work with, here’s a handy list of do’s and don’ts to keep in mind as you embark on the magnificent process of dancemaking (not an all-inclusive list):

DO say “yes”.  Censoring your ideas and movement phrases in search of “the perfect dance” stifles the endless possibilities that lie beneath your subconscious.  Sometimes it’s beneficial to go into the studio and noodle around in front of a video camera, and from those ramblings begin to form the structure of your dance.

DON’T use extremely popular music.  While they can (arguably) get away with this on So You Think You Can Dance, popular music is susceptible to preconceived thoughts and memories among your audience.  The Plain White T’s make fun little ditties to dance to, but that doesn’t matter if half your audience is thinking hearing it at the dentist’s office while getting a root canal instead of watching your dance about greasers from the 1950s…

If you get in a rut, DO rely on time-tested mechanisms such as canon, theme and variations, ABA, and a host of manipulations to expand your material.  Often, it’s not more steps that you need but distortions of your core movement phrases to “blow up” the dance you already have. Do your dance backwards, upside down, on the floor, in a circle…. You get the idea.  Good resources to check out are Doris Humphrey’s The Art of Making Dances and Lynn Anne Blom’s The Intimate Act of Choreography.

DO be wary of props.  And nudity.  Props, when used to excess, can be tacky, but even worse than this is an underutilized prop.  If you’re going to use a prop, make sure it’s necessary and fully utilized.  That goes for chairs and loose costume items. The same thing goes for nakedness.  It may be en vogue to bare your butt while simultaneously bearing your soul in a dance, but ask yourself if it’s really necessary in order to get your point across.  Some of the riskiest dances are not the naked ones with beach balls, but the ones that are just a dancer, simply dressed, moving through space.  Always come back to your original idea, and be sure that each element you add to a dance contributes to it.

DON’T try to take on the world in one dance.  One of the biggest signs of a novice choreographer is a dance that tries to solve the war in Sudan in 12 minutes.  While I’m not saying this isn’t possible (anything is possible), when getting your feet wet I’d encourage you against the “go big or go home” philosophy. Keep to ideas that are close to your heart…

But… DON’T make a dance about your ex-girl/boyfriend.  It’s a dance, not a therapy session.  No one really wants to see your dirty laundry on stage, especially if it’s pertaining to a mutual acquaintance.

DON’T get frustrated.  Be patient with yourself and, if needed, take a step back.  Take a week off and let everything sink in.

DO seek feedback along the way, and participate in works-in-progress showings.

DON’T be afraid to throw all of these rules out the window.  Textbooks abound on rules and mechanisms by which to create dances (two of which are referenced above), but as you get to know yourself as a choreographer you’ll find out that some of those rules are meant to be broken.

Lauren Warnecke, MS, Photo by Kelly Rose

Contributor Lauren Warnecke, M.S., is a Chicago-based dance artist, educator, and writer. She trained at the Barat Conservatory of Dance before earning a BA in Dance at Columbia College Chicago. In 2009, Lauren completed her MS in Kinesiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, with a concentration in Motor Control and Learning. Lauren is a Visiting Instructor for the department of Kinesiology and Nutrition at UIC, and teaches master classes and seminars in ballet, modern dance, creative movement, and dance pedegogy.  She is certified in ballet by the Cecchetti Council of America and a member of the American College of Sports Medicine.

In addition to teaching at UIC, Lauren owns and operates Art Intercepts, under which she creates, informs, and writes about dance. The primary mission of Art Intercepts is to bridge the gap between the scientific and artistic communities to present programming that is informed, inventive, and evidence-based. Lauren is a freelance writer/blogger and maintains monthly columns at Danceadvantage.net and 4dancers.org and is featured on a panel of nationally reputed dance writers at the 2012 Dance/USA conference. She also works periodically as a grant writer and production/stage manager for artists in the Chicago dance and performance community, and volunteers for initiatives encouraging Chicagoans to engage in local, sustainable, and active lifestyles. Lauren likes to hike, bake scones, and dig in the dirt.

Using Video Dance To Develop Choreographic Skills

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by Janet Neidhardt

As a dance educator I am constantly working to find new ways of engaging my students to learn about dance and making dances. Video dance has become more popular with the growth of YouTube and the ever present flash mobs popping up all around the world. It seems everyone has the ability to capture a video on some device and even the technology to edit it has become more mainstream. I have recently heard choreographers say they might start making video dances simply because they think they will get more exposure on YouTube than they will with a performance on a stage.

Last school year I decided to try and teach my high school students how to make a video dance. Together we researched many video dances on YouTube and discussed the site specific use of the environment and the various camera positions and types of framing. With this simple basic information I sent my students off to create their video dances and when they came back I was very impressed with the clear form their videos had taken. I could see how their skills in choreography from class had transferred into the video camera choreography. Their choreographic eye used in the studio was transferred to the camera lens. I was amazed that with such little instruction my students created great works and thought if I was really able to teach them more solid video dance content how much better their projects could be.

I still felt that I needed to learn more about this growing art form of mediated dance in order to better educate my students in the future. As luck would have it I was able to attend the Bates Dance Festival in July 2012, and there I took Media and Performance with Rachel Boggia, Shawn Hove, and Peter Richards. I gained practical experience in making my own video dance as well as a wealth of knowledge from these educators on how to teach students about making compelling video dances.

This Fall I returned to school with a new group of students and assigned a more specific video dance project. I created a clear worksheet with specific “Framing”, “Camera Positions”, and “Camera Movements” vocabulary which we discussed a length while watching and critiquing various video dances online. Through discussion and analyzing the students were able to identify their aesthetic for video dance choreography with the camera lens. I then asked them to pick a location and create movement based on their location for their film shoot. I told them that the environment is another dancer in the work, movement must be in response to the space the dancing is in, use the space like a prop, go over, under, through, around, and above it. I also asked them to shoot for “continuity”, something I learned from the Bates Festival teachers. Shooting for continuity means that a movement is continued from shot to shot.  It is important to shoot the same movement sequence several times from several angles to have a variety of choices. Students were more prepared this time around before they went out the film their dances. Because of this preparedness they went out to shoot their dances with more precision and ideas than the group from last year. They added music and edited their footage on their own then presented well thought out, impressive, video dance studies. They all had a clear beginning, middle, and end, and clear motifs.

Since then I have noticed that these students create more successful choreographic works in the studio. They have a sharper eye for details within movement they are performing and movement they are watching. I think that their experience with viewing movement through the camera lens changed how they see movement in a stage space. I plan to keep evolving this video dance project each year.

Some video dances we looked at in class are listed below-

Aroma 2006 by Doug Rosenberg:

Drive 2008 by Jane Osborne:

Horse:

dancer posing upside down
Janet Neidhardt

Contributor Janet Neidhardt has been a dance educator for 10 years. She has taught modern, ballet, and jazz at various studios and schools on Chicago’s North Shore. She received her MA in Dance with an emphasis in Choreography from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro and her BA in Communications with a Dance Minor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Throughout her time in graduate school, Janet performed with Sidelong Dance Company based in Winston-Salem, NC.

Currently, Janet teaches dance at Loyola Academy High School in Wilmette, IL. She is the Director of Loyola Academy Dance Company B and the Brother Small Arts Guild, and choreographs for the Spring Dance Concert and school musical each year. Janet is very active within the Loyola Academy community leading student retreats and summer service trips. She regularly seeks out professional development opportunities to continue her own artistic growth. Recently, Janet performed with Keigwin and Company in the Chicago Dancing Festival 2012 and attended the Bates Dance Festival.

When she isn’t dancing, Janet enjoys teaching Pilates, practicing yoga, and running races around the city of Chicago

Was That Original Ballet Hatched or Snatched?

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by Risa Gary Kaplowitz

DanceVision’s The Snow Queen. Photo by Melissa

A few weeks ago, I found myself watching a YouTube video of an “original” ballet choreographed this year. It had been posted by a small professional company on the West Coast. I don’t remember how I came upon it because the shock that hit me within the first few minutes obliterated any memory of that minor detail.

The ballet that I had found on YouTube was based on the same classic children’s story as the one on which I had based my original choreography for a DanceVision production that premiered in New Jersey six years ago. The California based company had used a contemporary vocabulary, while I had used a neo-classical one. Also, they had commissioned an original musical score, while I arranged classical pieces to create the music for my ballet.

Still, there were undeniable similarities between my treatment of the story and the version I found on YouTube. For example, I had focused on a minor character in the story, and so did the other company. The flow of my narrative differed from that of the book on which it was based, yet the other company seemingly used the same order of events as I did.

Most troubling was how similar the other company’s production looked to the one I designed for DanceVision. The YouTube video showed a digitally animated backdrop to support the storyline, a tool that was not widely used in ballet productions at the time. I used it in my production, well before the highly original animation tool helped garner acclaim for The Royal Ballet’s version of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon. DanceVision’s  animator and I painstakingly organized my animated backdrop. I subsequently saw projections very similar to ours in the other company’s production, to which my reaction was one of jaw dropping recognition. One scene in particular appeared to have miraculously flown into their video.

Was it merely coincidence that enabled a company on the opposite coast to produce a ballet twin-like to mine? [Read more…]

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