Does EVERY choreography have to be the best?

[Kasienka]

I'm trying to choreograph 3 sets. And… I will admit to being a perfectionist in dance. So it's hard for me to just choreograph without it being the absolute most I can do. What's your opinion? Should all your choreographies be 100 percent your best or can some just be 70 percent, just to finish. I feel like if I try 100 percent at all of my choreographies. I will never ever finish them.

[Tarik Sultan]

It's good to have a choreography as a template, but don't be too set in it. If you are entertaining at parties, most likely they will want to interact with you. If yiu see that they want to, then you'll have to go off your choreo to do that. If you see they are not the interactive type, then you can fall back on the choreo. The most important thing is your personality and charism in that type of setting.

[Dunyah]

What Tarik said. And if you are dancing in a restaurant you will also have to dodge waiters/waitresses and interact with customers. Save your most elaborate choreography for a stage situation.

[Shanazel]

I firmly prefer improvisational dance to choreographed dance. The latter lacks genuine emotional response to the music which means the true spirit of the dance is sacrificed to some notion of perfection. Be brave. Learn to dance without dependence on a set of instructions.

[Darshiva]

Unless I'm on stage, I tend to go for improv because it's way more situationally flexible. I have a total of ONE choreo that I use in a crowd-pleaser setting, and that's because it has so many turns in it & I can turn & mug at everyone in the audience equally and I can favour one section of the audience that is really receptive if I need to. Super-flexible choreos are hard to write for that kind of setting, so I'm with Shan on this one. Just stick to a handful of your super-favourite songs and rotate through them for improv performances - that way it stays fresh for you & your audiences and you can adjust EVERYTHING on the fly.

If you do decide to write a choreo or 3, hell no you don't need to be perfect. I'm not. I am notorious for taking my choreos out for a test drive on a live audience before tweaking them to perfection. In fact, only my most recent drum solo didn't need that - the first in over 10 years of dancing!

[Tarik Sultan]

I firmly prefer improvisational dance to choreographed dance. The latter lacks genuine emotional response to the music which means the true spirit of the dance is sacrificed to some notion of perfection. Be brave. Learn to dance without dependence on a set of instructions.

I fully agree. It wasn't till I was forced out of my comfort zone that I truely came into my own as a dancer. I had been use to dancing in places where there was a real stage and a live band and a certain structure to a routine. When I got to my new gig, I realized I had to throw everything out of the window, including my attitude and expectations.

I had to forget everything I was use to and embrace the circumstances I was noiw in. No real stage, everybody in your face, no one wanted "a show", they wanted a party and I had to bring it. That meant interacting with them on a much more personal level. It forced me to develop my personality, abandon my shyness and learn how to draw people out oftheir shell.

Over the years, I've seen dancers come and go and the ones who hold to a ridgid structure always leave the audiences cold. Remember, that as a dancer, your job is to make the audience happy, not have them give you attention. The secrate is to go out there and give the attention to them. In so doing, they will return that attention to you.

[Aniseteph]

I don't perform professionally but can totally relate to fixating on choreographic perfection. It's only taken me several years (I don't perform much, OK?) to work out the following:
a) the amount of time and stressing is totally out of proportion to the results,
b) I have never managed to perform one of my own choreographies all the way through. I always forget, improvise, and most people don't know or care.
c) The stress of worrying about what comes next, oh noes I went wrong, kills the dancing. If I can just get up there and pretend to be the belly dancer the results are much more fun for all concerned.

So for me, fixating on choreography gets in the way. It's taking a bit of courage to put it into practice, but I'm better off focusing on knowing the music, finding a few combinations I want to get in there and a rough outline, and doing something more productive with the time I save.

[Amulya]

Choreographies are an ongoing process, they are never finsihed. They evolve. The more you use them, they more you come up with better ideas and also when you have to change them due to situations mentioned above you suddenly get new ideas of how you can make them differently. I always improvised more, but sometimes it's good to have a choreography to fall back on. I tend to have choreographed bits to parts in a music piece, kind of like a frame around the improvising rest of it and to prevent I end up on automatic pilot and become boring.

[Shanazel]

Remember, that as a dancer, your job is to make the audience happy, not have them give you attention.[/B] The secrate is to go out there and give the attention to them. In so doing, they will return that attention to you.

Egg-zckally!

Tarik, did I ever mention that when I teach BD to a local high school PE class, I always mention you as a shining example for those guys who think "dance ain't fer dudes?"

[Jane]

Art is never finished, only abandoned. -Leonardo da Vinci