Dance Choreography Prompts: Ways to Enhance Your Creativity and Uniqueness What is Creativity in Dance?

Choreography involves creativity; it’s what takes technique and turns it into art. It enables dancers to convey emotion, personality and dynamics in a way that’s particular to them. Originality, meanwhile, is what sets one combination of movements apart from another and offers the viewer something new. Both can be honed, with time and effort, trial and error and deliberate exercises designed to get dancers out of their movement comfort zones.

Although technical skill is the cornerstone of dance, innovation and imagination make choreography. Dancers can increase their creative possibilities by disrupting habitual movement patterns, attempting novel ways of moving, and engaging in improvisation to develop their unique choreographic style.

Shaking Up the Status Quo: A Catalyst for Creativity

Probably the most restricting force on creativity is routine. Many times we find ourselves doing the same movements and combinations over and over again. And there are times when these movements and combinations restrict our creativity. The number one rule in sparking creativity is to break routine. This can be done by changing the music we dance to, or by dancing in different locations. Or even by rearranging the combinations we already know.

Even a simple tempo change, reversing a sequence, or playing with levels and direction can help. The dancer, in consciously breaking the pattern, challenges the body and brain to find new options, inspiring fresh solutions.

Improvisation Exercises

Improvisation is a fundamental aspect of the creative process. Improvisation enables the dancer to create movement without specific steps or movement patterns. Examples of improvisation activities are:

Music-Based Exploration: Play new music and dance, responding to tempo, dynamics, and mood. Avoid dancing patterns and dance to the music.

Spatial Limitations: Define a limited area to operate in, like a small square or diagonal line, to stimulate creative space usage.

Body Part Focus: Play with isolating body parts (arms, torso, legs) and freestyling with that body part alone, then try combining with full body movement.

Playing with emotions: Decide on an emotion for each phrase, how does that affect the way you move, the tempo, the dynamics?

I find these exercises enhance versatility, cultivate distinctive movement solutions and release dancers from habitual movement which can lead to clichés.

Randomness and Prompting

I like to use chance as a tool for creativity. When using prompts, dice, or cards with movement suggestions, there is an element of chance. For instance, “Design a series of jumps that isolate one side of the body,” or “Discover movements that are sharp and staccato.”

These tasks require dancers to be responsive, inventive and to link material together that they would not be expected to in a typical class. With the stimulus being unknown there is an element of spontaneity in how one creates and makes decisions.

Challenges with a Partner or as a Group

Then there’s working with a partner or in a group. When working in pairs, activities such as mirroring, leading and following, or sharing weight can provide fertile ground for new movement ideas. In a group, collective improvisation or choreographing phrases together can get the creativity flowing by having multiple minds, bodies and rhythms in the room.

For dancers, the process of working together teaches them to listen and watch each other, but at the same time it allows them to continue to do their own thing, which results in richer, more interesting choreography.

Exercises with Constraints

Interestingly, sometimes adding restrictions can increase creativity. By reducing the amount of steps, restricting the work to one level, or only allowing a few directions, the dancer is forced to think in new ways within the established parameters. The rules provide a way of breaking traditional ways of moving, and the dancers must find alternative ways of moving within the rules which can sometimes result in surprising, creative movements.

For instance, setting a one-minute phrase using floor work only or right angles requires dancers to dive into details, such as texture, quality and transitions, that they may not focus on while dancing freely.

An Alternative Approach to Musicality

Music can be a great catalyst for inspiration. Go beyond the rhythm and play with the melody, harmony, or no music at all. You can also do exercises like:

Not counting the beat: Instead of counting the beat, only dance to the melody or harmony.

Dynamic Changes: Use an increase or decrease in volume, or a moment of silence, to indicate an increase or decrease in tempo, dynamics, or intensity.

Multi-Layer Listening: Listen to different parts in music (such as various instruments), and respond separately with movement.

All of these strategies encourage dancers to think about music differently, with the result that their choreographic choices are more sophisticated and imaginative.

Sometimes, inspiration from non-dance sources is invaluable.

Sometimes inspiration comes from non-dance related things. From art, from nature, from a story, even from our day-to-day movements. For example, a dancer may look at the way an animal moves, or a storm approaching, or the way a couple plays with each other, and use that as inspiration.

Other activities are dancing what you see in a painting or photo or improvising based on what the texture, color or shapes you see around you might suggest. Incorporating non-dance sources will result in more distinctive, complex, interesting choreography.

Capturing and Reflecting on Ideas

For me, an effective way to document these explorations is through choreographic journals and video diaries. I record improvisational sessions, write down movement exercises and my thoughts on what did or didn’t work and what felt innovative. I often go back to these ideas and reinterpret or refine them.