A Dancer’s Top Secrets To Learning Choreography Quickly

I couldn't say how many times I would go to class and just struggle on retaining choreography that I'm not used to. It was and still is pretty frustrating. Looking around to see that I'm practically the only one that can't get the moves down caused me to shy away from the studio and continue to have dance sessions in the privacy of my room. But we're all human and I've learned that all dancers struggle...some are just better at hiding it. Throughut my 20 years of on and off dancing, I have finally had an epiphany of ways to retain choreography so you don't continue to look like our girl Mindy here

1. Preparation

A lot of dancers, like myself, have been taught choreography to the numeric counts of the music. Later on when you begin to learn from more choreographers, you're exposed to more teaching styles. A lot of them tend to teach to the musicality. Dance musicality is how dancers hear, interpret, and dance to music. Dancers can demonstrate dance musicality in several ways; which sounds they dance to, how they highlight the sounds, and how they represent the mood of the song. Since society is so heavy on social media, a lot of choreographers almost always posts the songs that they will be teaching to. What you could do is look up the song to get familiar with it and listen very closely to the the rhythm, sounds, and mood of the song.

2. Chunking

Chunking is another learning technique where you learn something in separate sections, then group the sections together at the end. If you think about it, we as civilians use chunking to remember things like phone numbers, addresses, and even song lyrics. For example, 678-999-8212 is much easier to memorize than 6789998212.

In your dance class or audition, the teacher will probably teach the routine sections already.

But you can chunk the moves into lengths that work for you, whether this means going 1 8-count combo at a time, or separating the piece into 2 halves.

Chunking is a great tool to help you memorize choreography, but you have to make sure you’re connecting them together seamlessly.

3. Never mark the moves you're learning!!

Marking is a term used frequently in the dance world that basically going through the motions with no emotion. It essentially involves a run-through of the dance routine, but with a focus on the routine itself, rather than making the perfect movements.This is probably the most effective tip that has really helped a lot of dancers. While learning choreography, I would always mark the moves I learn and when it was time to actually perform the choreography, I would always mess up somehow. That is because my body was only used to dancing little instead of big. You should always learn the choreography full out and mark it once you know what you have the moves down.

With all of these tips, this should turn you from looking lost in the dance room to dancing confident with ease!