Dance Composition Basics: Capturing the Choreographer's Craft

Text instruction can go only so far in teaching how to create dances. Dance Composition Basics picks up where other textbooks leave off, with a bound-in DVD that features professional choreographers and dancers in action.

Designed for beginning college-level dance composition courses and dance educators at the middle and high school levels, this textbook and DVD package highlights selected portions of original dance compositions by two noted choreographers. The works of Alonzo King (Chants and Dreamer) and Dwight Rhoden (Verge) are recorded and analyzed to sequence the choreographic process. Students are able to witness a progression that takes them from conceiving and refining an idea to improvising and solving movement problems to shaping and performing dances.

The methods featured in Dance Composition Basics can be applied to a variety of dance styles including ballet, modern, and jazz. Each of the 27 lessons serves as a starting point that encourages novice dancers to embark on their own attempts at choreography with more confidence.

Structured to present concepts from simple to complex, the chapters cover the body, space, time, energy, and choreographic devices. Each chapter is divided into lessons based on the dance element or concept highlighted. The lessons challenge students to create solo, duet, trio, and group works. Each lesson includes the following components:

-One choreographic concept

-Video documentation of the choreographic concept

-Vocabulary words

-Introductory statement

-Warm-up

-Structured improvisations

-Creative choreographic problems

-Questions for discussion

-Assessment rubrics

The DVD supplements the written instruction in a progression that no textbook alone could achieve. It shows dancers as they solve movement problems, and it shows choreographers as they mold their works from conception to stage performance. DVD footage also captures the decision-making and problem-solving tactics used by each choreographer. With these concrete examples, students can form a basis of comparison when completing their own assignments.

Dance Composition Basics is a practical introduction to the methods and tools used in composing dances that engages students in the process—the preferred method of learning and teaching dance composition today. Through real-world examples, this text and DVD package demonstrates the direct relationship of the activities learned in the dance composition class to the current practices used by professional choreographers.