GreaseOlivia Newton-John and John Travolta in Grease (1978), directed by Randal Kleiser.© 1978 Paramount Pictures Corporation; photograph from a private collection
In most later rock dances, from the twist to disco, it is much rarer for people to dance as partners. There is also a greater stress on free arm and body movements than on set patterns of steps. Disco enthusiasts may incorporate elements of jazz, modern dance, and gymnastics into their repertoire, executing high kicks, turns, and even backflips.
Somes, MichaelMichael Somes (right) rehearsing with George Balanchine.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Choreography
Choreography is the art of making dances, the gathering and organization of movement into order and pattern. Most recent works of Western theatre dance have been created by single choreographers, who have been regarded as the authors and owners of their works in a way comparable to writers, composers, and painters. Most social and recreational dances, on the other hand, are products of long evolution, involving innovations that groups of people or anonymous individuals have brought to traditional forms. This evolutionary process is also typical of much non-Western choreography, where both the form and steps of dances are handed down from one generation to another and subject only to gradual and partial change. Even in cultures where it is common for dancers and dancing masters to create their own variations on existing dances, as among the Hopi in northeastern Arizona, it may not be traditional to honour an individual as a particular dance’s creator.
Michael Jackson, 1996.Alexander Natruskin—Reuters/© Archive Photos Choreographers’ motives and methods
When choreographers set out to create new works, or possibly rework traditional dances, their impulses or motivations for doing so vary widely. It may be that a particular dance has a function to fulfill, such as marking a celebration, embellishing an opera, or praying for rain. It may be that the piece has no specific function and that the choreographer is simply responding to an outside stimulus—a piece of music that has suggested a structure or movement, perhaps, or a painting, or a theme from literature, or possibly a particular dancer that the choreographer is interested in working with. Or the stimulus may be the choreographer’s desire to express a particular concept or emotion or a fascination with a particular choreographic idea. Such stimuli may, of course, influence the work even if the choreographer is producing it for a specific purpose, though, as with any artist, it is rare that a choreographer’s motives and intentions can be clearly analyzed—particularly during the actual working process.
The methods by which different choreographers create their work also vary. Some work closely with the dancers from the beginning, trying out ideas and taking suggestions from the dancers themselves before pulling all of the material together. Others start with clear ideas about the shape of the piece and its content even before going into the studio. The 19th-century choreographer Marius Petipa used small models to work out the groupings of his dances. The amount that any choreographer can do without dancers is limited, because the notation of dance is relatively undeveloped. Whereas a composer can write a complete symphony without meeting the orchestra that is going to play it, dance notation is mostly used in recording rather than creating dances (see below Dance notation). The three-phase choreographic process
The choreographic process may be divided for analytical purposes (the divisions are never distinct in practice) into three phases: gathering together the movement material, developing movements into dance phrases, and creating the final structure of the work. Gathering the movement material
The way in which the choreographer accumulates movement material depends on the tradition in which he works. In certain dance forms it may be simply a question of creating variations within a traditional pattern of movements. For example, dancing masters in the Italian courts of the 14th and 15th centuries simply invented variations on existing dances and published them in dance manuals bearing their own names. Even today many ballet choreographers use as raw material for their pieces the traditional steps and enchaînements that dancers learn in class. The same is true for many of today’s performers of Indian or Middle Eastern dance forms; they may not strictly follow the traditional structure and sequence of movements passed down to them, but they remain faithful to their characteristic styles, retaining the traditional quality of movement and not introducing steps or movements widely different from the original.
In modern Western forms choreographers have worked less within established traditions, creating instead a vocabulary and style of movement to suit their own personal visions. But even in the work of pioneering choreographers, it is possible to trace major influences. Martha Graham’s early work, in the 1920s, for example, was strongly influenced by the American Indian and Southeast Asian dance forms used by her mentor, Ruth St. Denis. Merce Cunningham’s technique owed a great deal to classical ballet. Even Vaslav Nijinsky’s ballet Le Sacre du printemps (“The Rite of Spring”), which audiences at its first performance in 1913 regarded as a complete break with known dance forms, may have been influenced by the rhythmic-movement exercises of the music teacher Émile Jaques-Dalcroze and by the interest in archaic dance forms already generated by Isadora Duncan and Michel Fokine.
Although each choreographer draws material from diverse sources and often employs contrasting styles, most dance works of a single choreographer show a characteristic style of movement. Dances, however, are rarely if ever a loose collection of isolated movements. One of the most important features of any choreographer’s style is the way in which movement material is connected into dance phrases. Developing movements into phrases
A phrase, loosely speaking, is a series of movements bound together by a physical impulse or line of energy and having a discernible beginning and end. (A rough analogy can be made with the way a singer phrases a multiplicity of notes within a single breath.) Many factors work to make the spectator perceive a series of movements as a phrase. The first is the recognition of some kind of logical connection between the movements that prevents them from appearing arbitrary and isolated. It may be that one movement flows easily and naturally into another within the phrase and that there are no awkward transitions or that there is some clearly visible pattern to the movement (such as the basic three-step phrase in the waltz). Rhythm is a significant factor, and movements are often clearly linked by a recognizable pattern of accents. A movement’s accent is measured by its force and duration; thus, a hard, sharp movement has a strong accent, while a soft, gradual movement has a weak one. Even a single movement, such as a head roll, may begin with a strong accent and end with a weak one. In phrases that have perfectly regular rhythm, the strong and weak accents recur in the same sequence and always over the same duration of time.
Dance phrases vary both in length and shape. A phrase may begin with a very forceful movement, or maximum output of energy, that gradually comes to a pause, or it may have its climax somewhere in the middle or at the end. Other dance phrases, in contrast, have an even distribution of energy. These factors determine the way in which the phrase is perceived by, and the effect that it produces on, the spectator. Long, repetitive, evenly paced phrases produce a hypnotic effect, while a series of short phrases with strong climaxes appears nervous and dramatic. One of the distinguishing features of Graham’s early style was her elimination of linking steps and fluid transitions between movements, so that many of her dance phrases were short, stark, and forceful.