What is Your Choreography Style?

The great thing about dance is that there can be hundreds of different ideas and interpretations and there can be space for all of them because none of them are necessarily wrong.

There'll probably come a point at some stage in your career where you'll either have to come up with a whole choreography or assist in creating one. It can seem like quite a big and exciting task. And it is exciting.

Coming up with choreography makes you need to look and really commit to what inspires you and who your influences are. You really need to understand your identity as a dancer in order to come up with coherent and beautiful choreographies.

This really applies across all the dance genres. It helps to be a versatile choreographer but many choreographers have a particular choreography style that they enjoy working with best.

Whether it's very Pussycat Doll inspired, very ghetto, camp or lyrical there's always styles that choreographers are more comfortable working with even though they may be able to perform them all.

There are different approaches to choreography. For some as long as the choreography is beautiful that's all that matters and rules and theories don't count so much as the final piece.

For others they may have a more tailored approach. For example a certain choreographer might enjoy dancing on the very obvious beats and want to dance on them all. Another choreographer might like to dance on the lyrics, another may want to combine both approaches.

Then there are whole chapters that can be written about style and interpretations of rhythm. As far as style is concerned, depending on the music and piece you're working with you could consider: do you want it to be flowy and smooth, slow and gentle, fast and light, energetic and strong, minimal, staccato, and also how would you like the piece to evolve?

This may seem like a lot of things to consider when choreographing. The fact is once you get down to it, you'll be making these decisions as you go along. The more routines you choreograph, the more second nature it will become and you can just listen to the music or be told the theme and instinctively know where you want to go artistically with it.

If in doubt just plug in the CD, listen to it and dance the way you feel. Because at the end of the day you can’t be wrong, it is your own interpretation. There may certain rules you may have to adhere to depending on the dance style you're working in, but apart from those you have a lot of freedom to explore your own ideas and find your own identity.

Gel Man writes for Dance Gel, a dance portal and directory that answers many of dancers most pressing questions and features the latest news in the world of dance.