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This is the podcast for us dance teachers balancing our teaching job with other jobs, commitments, and just life in general! We don't need to know how to run the whole studio, work with students 20+ hours a week, or win big at competitions; we just want practical advice and real conversations about how to be the best dance teachers we can be with the little time we have with our students. Join Maia on the casual dance teacher's podcast and in the casual dance teacher's network on Facebook.
Welcome to the Casual Dance Teacher's Podcast. I'm your host, Maia. No matter who, what, or when you teach, I'm here to share all my best tips and tools along with real and practical conversations with fellow dance educators to help you be the very best dance teacher you can be.
Let's talk about it.
Hey, everyone, and welcome back. It is the most wonderful time of the year.
It's almost Halloween. So first of all, that's one of my favorite times of the year anyway. And it's also Choreography Month again.
Within this Choreography Month, since I did do a whole choreographic series in Season 1, which I will link in the show notes if you want to get started there, that was really kind of the nuts and bolts of taking you through, you know, Week 1, how do you come up with a general idea? Week 2, how do you put that idea to movement? Week 3, how do you work on the spacing? Really, really basic concepts to kind of build a piece from scratch. In this choreographic series, I'm going to delve a lot more into very specific examples and how you can apply that to your own work. Because even if you know the process and you have a good handle on the process and how to go about it, we can all get stuck.
We can all feel like our ideas aren't good enough, I think. At least I know I can. And I don't want anyone to feel that way.
I don't want anyone getting stuck. So my idea with this series is that you can kind of listen to it like in the car on your way to class or if you're sitting in the studio stuck, you can put these episodes on and delve into some really specific examples of creative ideas that you can use to break through that choreography block. This first week, I am still going to be talking about the general theme because I think that's kind of where we all have to start.
So if you're stuck on coming up with a theme for your dance, I do talk about that a little bit in the first episode of Choreography Week from Season 1. But I'm going to get a lot more into detail today. And like I said, I'm using a lot of personal examples from my own work. I am super hesitant to do that because I don't want it to sound like I'm just like, oh my gosh, I did this thing and I did this thing and it was so great.
Like I really want it to be helpful for you. But I'm more talking about my process of how I got to these specific ideas so that you can kind of maybe emulate that and delve into what inspires you. So I'd love your feedback on how you feel about this, like this personal sharing.
Do you love that? Do you want me to be more detached and just give you practical ideas? So hop in the Casual Dance Teachers Network on Facebook. Let me know your thoughts on the episode and we can chat more there. Okay, so if you're looking for a theme for your dance and you're kind of stuck, there are a number of different routes that you can take.
And I think that many of us might think a theme for the dance and immediately think like a literal story of some sort, like a theme that is extremely easily recognizable, that has narrative elements to it, and often is linked back to pop culture. So at the moment that I'm recording this, like Wicked has been a big moment in pop culture recently, and people might think, okay, I'm going to do a Wicked-themed dance. There's going to be an Elphaba and a Belinda, and they're going to have costumes that look like that, and their movements are going to emulate those characters.
It's going to be very literal. We see a ton of that, and I think that's super, super fun. I am not someone that does a lot of like really literal, like, this is a dance about this, and anyone that's watching it will know the story.
But even having a modern dance background and having studied postmodernism a lot, I tend to still have inspiration for my dances from pop culture, from books, from movies, from maybe the story that's told within a song or from a play or something. But rather than literally telling that story and making it really easily recognizable to the audience where I drew my inspiration from, I'm going to just borrow a few elements and kind of, that's a very millennial way of putting it, but convey the vibe without conveying the story. So I'm going off of vibes in my choreography, I would say.
And to me, this is just the easiest way for me to continue to churn out unique choreography year after year for multiple different classes and have it be exciting to me, because I'm working from source material that I'm excited about and interested in and inspired by, but also introduces both the students and the audiences watching to the concept of being comfortable watching dance that they don't know what it's about. Because I teach ballet and modern, I'm not using a lot of music that has lyrics. I haven't shied away from using lyrics entirely, but a lot of my music is instrumental.
And to have the audience be able to kind of sit with an abstract concept and glean from it what they glean from it and be okay with that and enjoy that, to me, is really cool, especially because I do teach in a rural setting now. And I think a lot of audiences haven't necessarily been exposed to that. And for the students, you know, my students are always going to be coming from all different backgrounds and have all different things that they're dealing with and things that they're inspired by as well.
And so I find that it really helps with the students' personal development to give them that space to say, well, what do you think this dance is about? Or why don't you choose what your character's motivation is in this piece? Because you don't have a character assigned. And it's not like I'm not hating on an upbeat pop jazz number, because we all love to see it. But it's not like that, where you're like, just be really over the top and fun and excited and smile really big.
And sometimes dancers that are coming from that background of being used to that are not comfortable making choices with facial expression. They're not comfortable with doing gestural movement without having a very specific instruction of what they're supposed to be acting out. That's why I keep a lot of my movement abstract.
But I think if I had to churn out five to 10, three-minute pieces every single year and have them all be different and they were all abstract, that would be boring for me. I don't think I would enjoy that. So let me give you some examples.
And I have kind of weird taste. So you might not know all of the source material that I'm referencing here if you do super cool. But if you don't, it's not important.
All I'm talking about is the process. So one of my favorite pieces that I have choreographed was inspired by the sweetest little claymation movie, Max and Mary, that I just love. And the theme song from that movie, like the primary track from the soundtrack is also just so sweet and delightful.
So I used that piece of music in a piece and the music itself really inspired me. But I also chose six characters from that movie and I came up with six static poses, just a static pose that was kind of an abstract representation of one of the defining character traits of that character. So I had six poses based on the characters from that movie and I used the music from the movie and I built the entire dance off of those six poses.
There were a couple different tableau moments where the dancers went into those poses and held them for a moment for the audience to kind of just observe and check them out and see them. And then I also started from the pose and turned the pose into a gesture. And from those gestures, I also started to build them out into dance steps that could travel and figure out how the dancers could move within that pose and through that pose and include the pose and the gesture in larger traveling phrases.
And boom, the whole dance came together from that. So if you're stuck, you can grab a book that you really like a movie that you really like, come up with some character based movement, and it's very easy to build a whole dance from there. Now, when I say I often choreograph off of vibes, another example that I'm thinking of is a solo that I created that I based loosely off of the movie Pan's Labyrinth, which is not a charming movie at all.
It's extremely dark and honestly a little too dark for me to really feel like I could share it with a student. Like I would never be like, hey student, you should go watch this movie and we're going to do a dance based on it because it could traumatize you. But I really like the movie and I really feel like it had a lot of themes that I wanted to explore as a choreographer and solos are tough for me and I get really in my head about the movement.
So I have to have some external thing informing the movement so that I can base the answers to all of those questions when they arise in my head. Like, should we really be doing that move? Instead of being like, am I good enough as a choreographer? Yes or no. I can just ask myself like, well, how does the movement serve the theme of that source material? So with this Pan's Labyrinth number, the main character in the movie is very innocent, like an innocent young girl.
But then, like I said, the themes of the movie bring a sense of terror and dread. So even though I wasn't being super literal with my interpretation of this movie in the dance, I came at it from a place of alternating between movement that emulated sweetness and innocence and movement that emulated that fear and dread. So we started out with a lot of relevé and lightness and lifted movement and still mad about it, guys.
I actually got called out because this piece ended up going to competition, which is very rare for my work. Like I have mentioned before, I typically work with recreational students, but this was a really special piece and it ended up going to competition and it did really well. But I got called out by one of the judges in one of my feedback videos, like 10 seconds into the dance.
I was like, this doesn't really look like modern because it was like on relevé and very lifted and light. And I'm still hurt about it. And if you're the judge that said that, I do apologize to you.
We can be friends and you can reach out to me. But I got mad about that because I was like, wait, 10 more seconds or it's a contraction because I just wanted to have that juxtaposition. And the music was very sweet and light.
So I felt like because of that, bringing out these elements of like really twisted movement, really dark imagery and those, you know, those low plies, those contractions that really work for that. It offered the dancer a ton to delve into with her own choices as a dancer, her own character development, being able to work in, you know, a lot of different placements and through a lot of different levels and placements of the body. So that's wonderful for the student.
And then for the audience, it just gives a really interesting viewing experience, which again, in solos, I think it can be hard to do that because if you just have one body on space, you don't always have as much texture as you would with a larger group. And then for little kids, definitely with little kids, I always like to have a theme because there's only so much you can do with kids that don't have a huge vocabulary of dance steps. So a few examples of things I've used as inspiration for my dances for younger students are the book, The Rainbow Fish, which is a really cute one.
But with little kids, you know, I'm not going to have like one student be the rainbow fish and it's too complicated a narrative to try and tell in a two minute dance with four year olds. But I did give them all like these pretty shimmery tutus that had sequins all over them. And I used the song, The Aquarium from the Carnival of the Animals, which obviously is pretty literal, like underwater theme.
And instead of using the very formal port de bras, which, you know, they're little kids that are just learning ballet, we're going to throw the basic arm positions in there. But I also use a lot of arm movements that were more like fins, you know, swimming movements. And that made it fun for them too.
Like they knew that they were playing fish and they could get into that character and made it a little bit more interesting. Another one that I really enjoyed doing for my my little pre ballet kiddos was just a dance to the song, The Royal Fireworks. I forget, is that Bach? I can't remember.
But if you look up The Royal Fireworks, I thought, oh my gosh, what's more chaotic? A pre ballet class or a box of fireworks exploding on stage? They're pretty close, right? So I actually did build a prop for this that was like a detonator. And I quote unquote, accidentally like I actually walked on stage during the recital and accidentally set it off. And then out come all of these little four year olds and these bright colored tutus.
And they're doing like leaps and jumps and stuff like that. And it was really silly. But I just kind of leaned into the fact that I knew that that class, whatever they did on stage was not going to be 100% in unison.
So I was like, if I make them the fireworks, then that's okay. It could just be straight fireworks. And that was so cute.
I love that. That was my first pre ballet class I ever taught. And some of those students are teenagers now.
And they're still dancing. And they're beautiful. And it makes me emotional.
Okay, one more example. Just again, I'm trying to shoot as many different ideas at you and just see if something might help inspire someone who's struggling with that choreography block. So as I said, I typically will use instrumental music when I'm teaching ballet and modern classes.
But there is a song by a Canadian kids artist named Fred Penner called I am the wind. And I am the wind is so pretty. And I just thought it was perfect for my little kiddos.
So they got really beautiful floaty costumes. And this was another one where the port de bras also turned a little bit more free and wavy at times so they could emulate the wind. And it does have words, but I thought it was very effective as a ballet dance.
And it was really beautiful and simple. You know, I didn't have to do a whole lot of work to convey that one to the audience. But it was just a nice way to use repetitive movement because they actually did the same exact combination for every single repetition of the chorus of that song.
But because there were the lyrics and people could listen to that, I think it made it interesting enough to hold their interest. Okay, I'm just going to give you one more example from my own work. For my senior thesis in college, I was in the academic setting.
So I was doing a ton of studying and reading about the history of creating multimedia works and telling stories through movement and dance and various media. So throughout the time that I was doing that work, I was just kind of gathering elements from a ton of different sources that I was interested in. And I made my own narrative.
So I would be like, oh, this concept from folklore is really interesting. And I want to include it in my dance. And oh, this thing that actually happened in history is so cool.
I want to do a nod to that. And this imagery has popped up at a number of different performance settings. I would like to explore that and use that as an homage to these pieces that came before mine.
And I just made my own story up. I literally like sat down and wrote it out. And what was great about working in that academic setting was that I could actually survey the audience after they watched the piece to ask them what they gleaned from it.
Because although I did have a narrative, and I had like specific characters and imagery and things like that, it was still told in a pretty abstract way. There was no narration. There was no description in the program of what was going on.
There was no individual acts or scenes. And the music was custom written by a friend of mine, which was so cool. But it was very ambient.
It didn't really give anything away whatsoever. So I got to do this survey of the audience and gather data. And a lot of the general themes that folks took away from it were the same or similar to what other people saw in it.
But as far as specific characters or plot points, absolutely like no consensus whatsoever. And I think that just speaks to the fact that even if the dancers don't necessarily quote unquote, get it, what it is that you're trying to tell. And even if the audience doesn't get it and doesn't know exactly what it was you were trying to tell, that's okay.
They can still have a really deep appreciation for what you did. And it can still be a really great experience for your students. So I wouldn't shy away from that.
Okay, that was the primary topic that I really wanted to cover. Being able to use source material as inspiration without feeling like you have to retell it. With that said, because I mentioned doing an exact narrative and then doing a more abstract narrative theme, I will also just mention again that you don't have to have any kind of very specific source material.
You don't have to have any very specific theme to your dance for it to be effective. For example, I've talked about using the music as inspiration within another theme, music from movies a lot of times I feel like is great because A, a lot of times those tracks are like right around three minutes, which is beautiful for us as dance teachers. B, those songs were written to have a visual element playing concurrently with them.
So as a choreographer, I feel like taking out whatever movie scene was playing and putting in a dance number that has the same vibe is really easy. But even if you haven't seen the movie, if you pick a song from a movie soundtrack, or you find a song that you like, any song that you like, you can use the song as your inspiration. Absolutely.
I know we all know that, but there's a lot of different ways to approach it. You can just put that song on and dance, improvise, and then pick what you like and use it in your dance. If you're feeling kind of stuck with that, put the song on, but just listen for the rhythm.
It might be the percussion track exclusively, or you might be getting the rhythm through a different instrument like the piano, let's say. And try and drown out any lyrics, try and drown out any other noise, just listen to what's producing the rhythm. And then you could come up with a combination that exactly replicates that rhythm with the body, whether it's just with the feet, like I stamp on this longer beat, and then I'm doing a pas de bourrée when it goes one, two, three, or, you know, whatever, make a rhythm combo.
And then that can be the basis or the theme for your dance, and you can build more movement around it. Or you could ignore the rhythm completely, because I know for me, sometimes I'll get really caught up in the rhythm. And then I actually lose sight of listening to the other instruments that might be doing a polyrhythm or just might be layering on top of that in an interesting way.
So if your body's only moving to the rhythm, and you feel like it's starting to fall a little flat, because the movements are looking similar throughout the dance, try and drown out the rhythm and just listen to another instrument. And like, is there a string section? Or is there a piano that's doing a background line or something like that, and come up with a movement that really emulates just that one instrument. And then you can start to layer different instruments on top of each other and come up with a combination for each instrument's part in that song.
Then you have, you know, maybe four or five, six different combos, one for each instrument, you can string them together back to back, that should give you a lot of material, or you can start to layer them on in really interesting ways. Now, if all of that fails you, you have no inspiration. You're like, I don't know a story that I want to do.
I don't know what costumes, I don't know what song or anything. Pick up the book that is closest to you right now and open the book to a random page and randomly close your eyes and point to six words, and then come up with one movement for each word, whether it's a movement that is an exact representation of that word, or just a movement that pops into your head because of that word, and then start to string those movements together. I really genuinely think it can be as simple as that, and some of us psych ourselves out, and I'm going to hate on social media again and say that if you're like scrolling through videos on TikTok for 40 minutes of numbers that have all gone viral, and then you're like, ah, what am I supposed to choreograph? All the themes have been done.
Every theme in existence. It doesn't have to be that complicated. You don't have to come up with this great theme that's going to resonate with everyone and be so cool and catchy.
It can be random, and the dance will come. You can put words in a hat, like random words. You can look at your own diary or your own journal if you have one and go like, oh, what was I thinking about writing about on this day? That's obviously something that's going to be personal to you enough that you should be able to draw some movement inspiration from it.
But I think actually the more specific we get when we're experiencing block, the easier it's going to be to break out of it. So what I mean by that is not like, oh, what should my theme be? Because that's so broad. It could be anything.
If you're really stuck and you don't know the theme, turn on the TV, see what show is on and be like, okay, that's going to be my theme, whether it's the theme song from the show or drawing inspiration from the characters, or maybe everyone's sitting around in a diner and you can be like, oh, it could be a diner theme. Leave it up to chance and just go with it, but make some specific parameters for yourself so you can't talk yourself out of it and be like, no, that's not a good idea. Be like, I'm going to open this book.
I'm going to point to six words on the page, and I'm going to come up with one movement for each of those six words, and I'm going to put them together into a combo. If you hate the combo, when you're done, you don't have to use it, but force yourself to do something like that that's very specific. So you have something new and fresh, because as soon as you come up with something new and fresh, you have technically broken out of that block, and then you can do without what you will from there.
I hope that helps. I chatted way longer on this episode than I was expecting to. Holy cow, but I just get so excited about choreography and I love sharing with all of you, and I'd love to hear how you've broken out of your own choreography block, if that is something that you've experienced before, and what your favorite themes are that you came up with, because I got to share a few of mine, and thank you for entertaining that for me, but I want to hear yours too, and especially this upcoming season.
If you're inspired, you're like, oh, I never thought to do a theme from this because, you know, I thought I couldn't tell that story, but now I'm realizing I could use it in a more abstract way. Let me know. I would be so, so excited to hear that.
Ways that you can connect with me are, as I mentioned, the Casual Dance Teachers Network on Facebook. You can also join us on Instagram at the Casual Dance Teachers Podcast, and please leave a review for the show, especially throughout this choreography month. If you haven't already, and you're enjoying and learning more about choreography, give the show a review so we can continue to share with more people.
Thank you to GBMystical for the theme music. And our final quote today is from the legendary Pina Bausch. When I first began choreographing, I never thought of it as choreography, but as expressing feelings.
Though every piece is different, they are all trying to get at certain things and are difficult to put into words. Everything belongs to everything else. The music, the set, the movement, and whatever is said.
I realized after recording this episode that the movie that I referred to as one of my sources of inspiration is not called Max and Mary. It's called Mary and Max. And also, the music for the Royal Fireworks song was not composed by Bach.
It was composed by Handel. I was 0 for 2 for those, and I figured I would just throw it out there. If you are shaming me and going tsk tsk because I had my facts wrong about those, you are right.
I was wrong. And just correcting that. Thanks.
Bye.