We love doing group choreographing in my studio. It’s a way to teach newbies how to go about choreographing and it’s also a handy tool for creating a sense of community and understanding between students. Great friendships are form during these exercises.
So how do we go about it?
With students:
Firstly, each student brings music they like. We listen to it as a group and discuss the music. We talk about the style, rhythms, lyrics (if there are any) and feeling of each piece. Then we choose! This is probably the hardest part. So much great music out there and sometimes each student connects with different music and a different style of dance. Usually for first timers we suggest choosing a pop song so they don’t have to worry about changing rhythms and the formalities that go with baladi, raqs sharqi etc… (plus we mainly do fusion styles in my studio and only progress to Egyptian in advanced).
Each student then listens to the song at home and gets a feel for the music. We encourage them to improvise while listening to it to see what naturally comes to them. When they come to the next class they are usually excited to get started.
We allow them to share ideas with each other, explain how each phrase feels to them, what moves they would dance to each part. From these discussions the choreography starts forming. It takes a few classes for them to get into the flow but when they get going, there’s no stopping them.
I find this approach allows each student to connect with the music (and each other) and each individuals voice to be seen in the dance. The students are proud of what they created and it often inspires newbies to choreograph a solo afterwards. It also makes idea the solo choreographing less daunting.
With teachers/professionals:
We have 2 teachers in our studio. Mel and myself. We are equal partners in the studio and work together nearly everyday. When we choreograph our duos we have even more “connectiveness” than our students. This comes from many years of dancing together and also many gigs where we’ve thrown in the deep end and had to keep connected to make it successful. We choose our music together and we do every step together. We aren’t afraid to say, “that doesn’t work for me”.
We also have a certain amount of collaboration in the dances we choreographed by ourselves. We’ll suggest changes that we think will work better or better highlight our strengths. In fact we allow our “older” (ie. more experienced students) to have a say in the group dances we teach them. No egos allowed! Each person has the right to voice their opinion and this allows teaching moments where we can tell the student why their suggestion may not work or how awesome that suggestion is.
I enjoy the group choreographing exercises as it also allows me as a teacher to see where my students growth is at and what styles best suit them. There is so much to learn in a group situation; the music, the moves, phrasing, social dynamics and connectivity. I highly recommend adding this to your curriculum.