ABSTRACT
Amateur dance in the Netherlands has gone through important developments over the past ten years. Increasingly more people want to create choreographies with and for the amateur dancer and there is a steady growth of amateur dance productions. This development is stimulated by national and regional art and dance institutions in the Netherlands and has contributed to the growth of the quality of the amateur dancer and the amateur dance productions. In addition, there has been expansive development of amateur dance circuits, choreography projects and festivals with a need for more stages/performance spaces to perform these productions. The increase of all these new dance productions and new stages has had a positive influence in the field of amateur dance, yet we are conscious that there are also some less positive aspects due to these developments. Many amateur dance choreographers do not practice the craft of choreography in a sufficiently competent and professional way and thus, many of the choreographies shown on these stages have been poorly crafted. Therefore, the same groups and choreographers win the prizes at festivals. The conclusion is that, though performance facilities have improved, the development of the craft of the choreographers has not developed accordingly. As a direct result, the National Centre for Amateur Dance (LCA) in the Netherlands developed a new project for choreography coaching in 1991.1 This was the start of a structural approach to coach beginners and advanced choreographers to help them with the challenges, problems and questions they encounter in the studio.
