How Is Dance Choreography Created?
Creating choreography for dance can be achieved via 2 main means:
1. Choreographing when you are inspired.
2. Trying out ideas and dancing to music, and letting the ideas come to you as you work.
Most choreographers will follow one of these two approaches, or perhaps even both depending on what it is that they are working on.
The first approach - choreographing when inspired is probably the most straight forward. You see something you like, an idea comes to you that you want to follow up on, a piece of music speaks to you in sequences and combinations.
When this happens it is just a matter of getting the ideas together and putting them together into a logical piece. There isn't really anything more to it.
This inspiration can strike quite accidentally, for example you might hear a piece of music from a passing car or you can play a part in it by taking part in activities that are known to inspire you.
When that inspiration does hit its like a writer that suddenly sees a plot opening up in front of them and can't put their pen down. You may have so many great little dance sequences and may not be able to use all of them!
The second approach is a more methodological way of doing things which also has its benefits. Some people use inspiration as an excuse not to do any choreographing at all. Or perhpas they like doing things in a certain way as they work.
Just putting on some music and trying some ideas can get the choreographic process started in many cases. By moving the body the mind kind of gets the idea that its here to dance and create something new so this approach can work well.
It can also discipline you into creating routines on a regular basis if you have a target, for example if you need to choreograph a certain number of routines by a given date.