The Process of Choreography

The Choreographic Process

• Stimulus

• Decision on type of dance and how your are going to present the stimulus through thorough research

• IMPROVISATION around initial ideas

• Select and refine your best ideas of apporpriate movement material

• Create a motif

• Motif development and use of choreographic devices.

Motif and Development

Motif: a motif is a movement or short movement phrase that forms the basis of the structure of a dance.

It can convey the theme/idea of the dance in physical form. It can also mark a recurring feature of the accompaniment, e.g chorus of the music. You also may want the motif to convey the character and reflect the initial visual stimulus.

16 Ways to Manipulate a Motif

1. Repition - Repeat exactly the same

2. Retrograde - Perform it backwards. Start at the end and follow it back through space - like a movie running in reverse.

3. Inversion - Upside down inversion, you may have to lie on the floor or stand on your head.

4. Size - Condense/Expand. Take the motif and do it as small as you can. Try even smaller. Now take the movement and make it bigger, as big as you can.

5. Tempo- Fast/slow/stop. Take the motif and do it as fast as possible or as slowly as possible.

6.Rhythm- Vary the rhythm but not the tempo. The variety and pattern of the beats should be altered, not the speed or length of time it takes to accomplish.

7. Quality - Vary the movement quality. Try the same movement quivery, drifting, with erratic tension etc.

8.Instrumentation- Perform the movement with a different body part; try several different parts of the body. Let another performer do it. Have a whole group do it.

9. Force- Vary the amount of force you use in producing the movement. Dot it with a great ideal of strength, from beginning to end. Now repeat it again, with very little force, gently, weakly. Carefully try to keep the change in force only.

10. Background- Change the desgin of the rest of the body from its original position and repeat the motif. Let the rest of the body to do something while the motif is going on. Sit instead of standing. Try prehaps twisting all the rest of you into a knot while still performing the regular motif. Add another person. Add to or change the set, the lighting.

11. Staging - Perform it at a different place on the stage and/or with a different facing to the audience, sideways or on a diagonal.

12. Embellishment- (Ornamentation). The movement itself can have the embellishment, or a part of the body can be embellished as it is involved in the movement; or try embellishing both the body and the path of movement at the same time.

13. Change of Levels - Change the motif to a different level: the horizontal, the verticle , the sagittal level or any other slice of space. Do it on a different level. Trace the path of the gesture and use it as a floor pattern.

14. Additive/ Incorporative - Additive: while doing the original motif, simultaneously execute any kind of jump, turn, or locomotor pattern (triplet, run, slide.)
Incorporative: make the original motif into a jump, turn or locomotor pattern. Although this can be though or impossible with some motif.

15. Fragmentation- Use only a part of the motif, any part. Use it as an entity in itself. Use it to attend to a detail, a part worth isolating that might otherwise be overlooked. Or use several parts of it, but not the whole thing -such as the beginning third, a tiny piece halfway through, and the very, very end.

16. Combination - Combine any of the above so that they happen at the same time. This lets you combine affinities (faster with smaller) or antagonists (faster with larger) for choreographic interest and technical challenge. Fragmentation us particulary effective when combined with others. You may combine three or four manipulations at the same time. Variety and complexity grows as you combine more and more manipulations.