ABSTRACT
Until the twentieth century, dance tended to be created instinc tively by talented individuals, and often followed the structure of a narrative or a musical form. However, during the first half of the century, theatrical dance started to expand in numerous directions, demonstrating radical differences in technique, style, form and content. This growth and experimentation brought about more intellectual effort and analysis, demonstrating new theories of cho reography and craftsmanship. Today a number of books are avail able on the basic skills and knowledge that dance makers require: from the USA, Doris Humphrey’s The Art of Making Dances (1959), Blom and Chaplin’s The Intimate Act of Choreography (1982) and Sandra Minton’s Choreography: A Basic Approach Using Improvisation (1986, 1997). From the UK, Valerie Preston Dunlop’s book Looking at Dances: A Choreological Perspective on Choreography (1998) is on all the dance course reading lists and Jacqueline Smith Autard’s Dance Composition has now run to its sixth edition (2010). Most of these texts divide the craft of choreography into sec tions which include what Humphrey calls ‘the ingredients and the tools’. Each dance has its own vocabulary, syntax, grammar and phrasing, but it will become evident (Chapter 3) that what inter ested one generation of choreographers soon became uninteresting to the next. As the discipline evolved, ideas about dance making were continually challenged; should dances have specific meaning, as in character or plot, or could they be abstract? Is it best to use
the stage space like a pretty picture, possibly symmetric, with every one dancing together, or to deliberately challenge old rules of design in favour of individual material being performed anywhere on stage with an ethos of cooperative coexistence? These textbooks tend to introduce the student to specific crafting ideas from different perspectives in logical progression, and then to trial some of the ‘toolbox’ of composition in short studies, experimenting alone or in small groups. The general stages of choreographic process mentioned include choosing a theme or stimulus, generating some dance vocabulary, develop ing the material using dynamics such as weight and time, and manipulating it in space. Natural movement might be used as inspiration, but is often stylized in order to extend literal gesture along a continuum from representational movement that can easily be recognized by audiences, to highly stylized, symbolic dance vocabulary that allows the audience members a greater degree of interpretative freedom. Next in these texts follows some consideration of construction and form in dance making, which might include manipulation and orchestration of the dance material, the use of contrasts or rhyth mic shifts, or opposition, repetition, development or transitional ideas. The reason for teaching dance compositional theories in Dance Studies is to familiarize students with this range of potential skills through practice, to help them identify specific methods drawn from historical and contemporary sources and to encourage a more personal approach to choreography as knowledge, skill and personal aesthetic develop through experience. We do this by increasing the difficulty and complexity of the tasks as the course progresses: for example, a short solo or duet of two minutes in year 1, to a small group work of five to eight minutes in year 2, to a larger ensemble dance lasting up to 15 minutes in years 3 or 4. An interesting factor is that many professional choreographers, especially those well established in classical ballet or jazz dance, may not recognize some of these compositional tools, as they tend to be developed and used in modern and contemporary dance. But in Dance Studies courses around the world, it is now considered important to ensure that students learn how to compose, develop a ‘toolbox’ of choreographic crafting skills, and apply these in their own performance work and their teaching and workshops with
groups. After all, dance is a developing discipline, offering work in performing, making, teaching, facilitating and managing dance activity; having multiple skills related to dance will ensure a better possibility of finding work in our chosen areas of the larger dance field, and ensure that we can fulfil a number of roles within it. The next six sections examine more deeply the general stages of the choreographic process, a sort of step bystep approach to making a dance. Most of these stages apply to the creative art making process in dance, whether by professionals, amateurs or students.
