Thread: Choreography as a method for teaching

What are your experiences as both a student and teacher?

How do you use choreography in class? do you consider them to be a useful tool for teaching and if so, why?

Do group choreographies reflect the spirit of MED or something else?

What are your thoughts in general? ..g.:

When I was teaching, choreographies were a means of ensuring students learned certain skills and movements in a way that was pleasurable for them and gave them a sense of how this new dance form they were learning could actually be put into practice.

To me as a student and as a teacher, choreographies are like reading material in a new language. Baby beginner choreos are "Run, Spot, run!" Master teachers' choreos are novels and short stories. The more I learn to read, theoretically, the better my ability to write in said language will be.

I think choreographies, or set combinations, also allow you to refine and perfect movements. If you have three half maias, an ummi and three forward pelvic rolls in a choreo, then the chances are extremely high you will repeat that combination a gazillion times as you learn the choreo for performance. And I the teacher will come round and correct you to a greater or lesser extent depending on how able you are (the more able the more meticulous the correction, simpler stuff if you are still finding the movement really challenging) and over time you will learn how to do that set of movements to a reasonably competent level.

They are not the be-all and end-all, and I do think improvisation skills tend to be under-emphasised when you "have" to get classes ready for school performances, but I also think they are very valuable for dancers who do *not* live in communities where dancing is normal, where they do it from infancy etc. Most new BDers I've encountered are really frightened to dance. Having the performance of a choreography to work towards with their classmates gives them an attainable goal.

Bravo--Well Said, Zumarrad!!! :)

It depends on your objective. If you want "native feel," then I think choreography is only useful at the lower levels of education. Beginners are certainly intimidated by the idea of dancing without a safety net, and choreography is useful for overcoming that, but I think our system tends to be very weak at weaning students off of canned material and into more dynamic, individualized performance. Even if you do not like improv on stage and never want to perform without total preparation, you still need a plan for designing your own way to organize movement to music, and the choreographic process depends on being able to improv experimentally. If you are stuck in a haze of not knowing how to proceed because you've never been challenged with doing anything other than what your teacher has told you, and you've never had any formal guidance on how to improve what looks awkward or unimaginatively obvious, it makes the process more difficult.

Once you've taught students some core vocabulary, I believe it is time to start transitioning them into thinking for themselves. This is a couple of months after starting lessons, not 3-5 years. A mid-level beginner is capable of being given improvisational framework for short bursts of music. "Fill up the chorus of this pop song with shimmies and traveling steps" is a much more reasonable assignment than "Here's 'Inta Omri.' Go for it." The presentation of a classical song with it's complicated nuances should have been preceded by hours of directed practice in gradually increasing difficulty. It is utter nonsense to expect that students should be able to jump from a couple years of choreographed student recital pieces of Eddie Kochak and Hakim songs, to their own self-styled solo of a Mohammed Abdel Wahab song performed by a live band, with nothing in between. That's like thinking a wading pool prepares you for the Olympic High Dive. No wonder there are so many flailing, boring, and stylistically confused dancers out there.

This dance is, at its heart, improvised movement to improvised music. Clinging desperately to rigid displays is a cultural and historical misrepresentation at best. IMHO, there are two reasons why teachers don't make more of an effort to transition students away from choreography: they don't do a very good job of making students understand that they need to do this if they want to be good (even though it is uncomfortable, scary, and rife with potential for imperfection at first), AND those teachers tend not to be particularly good improv dancers themselves and want to hide it. Troupe promotion/performance aside, a teacher who never teaches anything but choreography is almost always one who is uncomfortable with her own ability to improv.

[Continued...]

At the point I am in my education, I actually prefer "following the bouncing butt" with a better dancer who is winging it than learning choreography. As I said in the original thread, choreography is good for learning how another dancer "feels the music," but I am more interested in the dynamics of thinking on the fly and enhancing THAT "feeling" now. Anticipating how someone else is going to move is more useful than memorizing a canned routine to me. I want more than being able to mimic someone else now.

Of course if your dream is large, multi-dancer, coordinated performance and/or folkloric group dancing, you have to rely on choreography and fixed combinations. Anything else is chaos on stage.

I agree with a lot of Tourbeau's points.

Choreography is great if you're strictly performing at class recitals or with a troupe, but if you ultimately plan to branch off and perform solo at parties and restaurants, then improvisational skills are key. Most of our paid gigs, as a whole, take place in highly uncontrolled environments. Whether the chaos is fun (like performing with live musicians) or simply crazy (party guest starts tipping you during your sword dance), a dancer needs a strong improv skill set to ride out the unpredictable moments and react to her crowds.

I, too, prefer "follow the bouncing butt" over choreography. When I was just getting started with improv, I also liked when my teacher introduced little improv games. IMNSHO, "let's form a circle and get up and dance for each other the last 10 mins of class" doesn't really count for improvisation past the beginner level.

I think it's worth pointing out that some of us are talking about different levels of dance. I taught beginners, and even my more "advanced" classes were still, uh, advancing beginners/intermediate. I can improvise as well as anybody in my community, better in many cases, but on an international level my improv is pretty mediocre. That doesn't alter the fact that I improvise or work off a loose structure most of the time, if I am dancing myself.

Teaching some improvisation early is really, really good, but improvisation is no good at ALL if a person doesn't know how to move. You can have a knack for undulating about the place looking appealing and in time to the music but you need more than that to be a good dancer.

For my own dance training, 10 years of nothing but developing my own choreographies prepared me for an additional 10+ years of exceptional improvisational skills.

I learned how to listen and break down music, acutely aware of all the nuances and rhythm changes, and paired appropriate movements to those levels of rhythm and melody.

I became comfortable with the general dance vocabulary and came up with my own in creating a synergistic whole b/t music and dance movement.

I believe this can do the same for any level of dancer, and for more advanced learners, to allow them their own authentic expression of the music, not teaching them yours. In teaching/learning a choreography one is still ultimately interpreting how their body is meant to portray it.

Many dancers become very uncomfortable with the idea of improvising b/c the music is unknown and they feel like they're repeating movements. If you train in musicality (listening and breaking down music) and develop dance vocabulary to synchronize with the music, the muscle memories take over when learning to improvise and natural, authentic expression comes through.

My take on it. Everyone else's experiences and opinions are just as valid. At the end of the day, there are many doors into the same room.

I do think there needs to be balance. I think choreography can be a great tool for learning, but any tool can be a crutch if you aren't pushed beyond the limits of that tool. Yes, we need to teach improv skills too, but here is how I have found choreos useful in class:

Choreographies can give a particular focus for learning a set of movements- if I am working towards a particular choreography, I know exactly what movements I need to drill & perfect for this session.

The give the student a good feel for transitions and movement combinations- it is a real life framework for how to get from move A to move B.

It is a framework for remembering what happened in class- students can go home &, instead of saying, okay, what did we actually go over this week, pull out the choreo & KNOW what we worked on this week. *I* appreciate this framework in workshops- my favorite workshops spend 3/4 of the time on technique and the last (usually half day) portion on a choreography which will allow me to remember & review easily.

& I still use it for my advanced classes when I want to look at advanced concepts like flow, stage presence, facial expression, spacial awareness, hand placement, etc- if you have something down by heart to the point you don't need to think about where your body is going, it frees up extra brain space so you can think about some of those finer points. It can also be a framework for a student to work from to make her own variation which can be helpful in the learning process.

Overemphasis of choreography can also encourage students to prioritize thinking over feeling. Obviously, the complexity of one's performance is dependent on a lot of factors, including experience (more is expected of a pro than a beginner) and situation (a theatrical presentation should be more sophisticated than open dance at a halfa). Still, there is a point where one must concede that obsessional planning of choreography--in particular, the urgency to process a laundry list of as many different moves as possible--can overtake a purpose of self expression or entertainment. Does anybody watch Souheir Zaki and imagine her thinking, "Oh, I've already done hip drops, so I can't do them again! Next time this part of the song comes around, I'll do hip lifts, and then I'll do forward twists, and...Oh, my, now I'm going to have to watch all of my DVDs again, because I can't think of something new to do on the fourth time!"?

Good movement flows organically out of the music, regardless of whether the final piece is formally choreographed or improvised. You can't make a list of all the moves you want to do and jam them back-endedly into a routine, and some students fall into the trap of thinking that choreography develops from outward in, instead of inward out. I believe the more improv you do (even if it is not improv in performance), the more you are forced to let go and work from the inside first, which (hopefully) leads to better quality, more connected dancing.

Early on, choreography helped me with transitions and with reading the music and knowing where to put in accents, etc. However, I never actually enjoyed dancing those choreographies (though I DID get alot from learning them).

I studied ATS solely for a year early on and that helped me to "think on the fly" and set me up for better being able to follow the bouncing butt in my current Egyptian classes. At this point, I find the Bouncing Butt method MUCH more useful to me now. . . and this method has really helped me "get" the music and really get a great feel for dancing too it.

now that I've given my why of using choreos in class, here are my musings on why choreos are so prominent, at least here locally, ymmv

I do wonder- is there more of a temptation to stick with choreography right now *because* we don't have live music opportunities? When your music is canned, are you more likely to do a 'canned' choreography too? This is the first year we've had a drummer even semi comfortable performing with dancers, but she's feeling us out as much as we're feeling her out right now. Improvising to music I know by heart may be fun, but I'm dying to try things out with a live band! But I know other dancers locally who haven't the slightest interest in working with live music & prefer to stick with their (admittedly rather impressive) choreographies. & maybe that's part of it too- when you can choreograph every microsecond of a dance, down to the pinky twitch & KNOW it will look good, it can feel safer to stick with that. I don't think it's nearly as fun to dance, but it makes for a polished crowd pleaser.

I've gone back and forth on this issue. I teach choreography a LOT. I think it suits beginners and intermediate students to learn choreo, but at some point they want to learn to bop around at a hafla. And anyone who wants to go pro and dance in restaurant & private party situations needs to be able to improvise.

The majority of my students don't aspire to being professional dancers. Most of them aspire to being in the student troupe, where they will mostly dance choreographies in group numbers. They will perform a solo a few times a year in a staged situation where choreography serves them well.

Still, I feel like group choreos are very limiting and, by necessity, require a different set of steps/skills than one uses in solo dance. So this past year I've been offering a solo skills class where we learn no choreography at all. We work on solo technique, emoting, stage presence, and improv skills.

I'm happy to have found some balance for my advanced students.

I don't teach. But as a student and now as an advanced dancer, I have seen everything. I am always torn because I sometimes feel that choreography is very limiting and many teachers do not provide opportunities in class for their students to learn improvisation. One of my early teachers did a combination of both, including a dance number which was designed with improvisational parts in it. This, along with dance circle and mirroring and matching, helped to develop both improv and choreo skills.

Now, the truth is that many people are very uncomfortable being put into that spot and do want the safety net of a choreo. The other, possibly more relevant question is this: what is the goal of the class? If it is mainly recreational, then what is the point of doing something - improv - which makes most beginning dancers very uncomfortable? At least on a regular basis? I have spoken to a few women who have left their belly dance classes because their teacher was asking them to improv and the students were so uncomfortable.

Now, I have no problem asking people to do things which make them uncomfortable when appropriate. I am a Coach and that's part of the job description. But when it is appropriate is a question of discernment. And it is individual depending on the class.

{{{HUGS}}}

As a student, I definitely want choreography at the beginning of my studies. You feel nervous in the first place, and having the choreography definitely provides a safety net.

As I've gotten more proficient, I like to play around more.

in the last year, I've learned a lot about creating choreography, since I had to create it for Wiggles of the West. I also learned about improv, because sometimes what I wrote on the paper was not what my body wanted to do! So I listened to my body.

I myself have trouble "following the bouncing butt." I need it broken down, but then I want the freedom to make it my own.

Just my 2 cents.

Edna

Originally Posted by SirenoftheSun

As a student, I definitely want choreography at the beginning of my studies. You feel nervous in the first place, and having the choreography definitely provides a safety net.

As I've gotten more proficient, I like to play around more.

in the last year, I've learned a lot about creating choreography, since I had to create it for Wiggles of the West. I also learned about improv, because sometimes what I wrote on the paper was not what my body wanted to do! So I listened to my body.

I myself have trouble "following the bouncing butt." I need it broken down, but then I want the freedom to make it my own.

Just my 2 cents.

Edna

Your "2 cents" were definitely worth more than two cents, Edna! ..g.:

I do not like learning choreos in class unless I'm going to perform them, or unless the class is learning the choreo for an upcoming performance in which I am not participating. Instead, I'd rather learn combos.

Both choreos and combos help us to learn how to do more than simply string movements together; rather, they are good tools for learning about transitioning between like-and-like and like-and-unlike movements logically and therefore smoothly.

One thing that a choreo can do, though, is help us learn how to maintain a "feel" throughout a piece of music. Heck, "feel" is a bit less important for beginners . . . what's important is maintaining technique, posture, arm positions, etc throughout a three minute song. With a choreo (or even a combo), you know where your arms are supposed to be in relation to your body, so you know if you're not doing it by simply looking in the mirror (or having teacher call it out).

I teach combos in my beginner classes. In my intermediate class, I teach combos, too, but at least once a year I teach a brief group choreo which is later performed. Also once or twice a year, I teach a very short solo choreo. Then there are the sessions where the students create their own brief choreos. Throughout all the sessions, there is conscious working toward improvisation.

To specifically address Caroline Afifi's question, "Do group choreographies reflect the spirit of MED or something else?" I will quote Tourbeau, who stated my feelings about choreo (especially group choreo) very well: "This dance is, at its heart, improvised movement to improvised music. Clinging desperately to rigid displays is a cultural and historical misrepresentation at best."

Yes, I think learning about choreo -- and learning choreos -- are very important. But I hope everyone who stays with me over time comes to love improv as much as I do!

Deborah

Student perspective: I haven't had much group choreo experience, and now I wish I had. I learned about two choreographies during 6-7 years (5 years really dedicated). This past spring/summer, I joined a class where we're doing 4 choreographies. The class is challenging as is, but I feel like I'm behind a bit because I never had to learn choreography and work on group stuff.

I think it's important to give a variety of opportunities to your students, just because they may end up working in duets or troupes or in situations where they need improv.

The first time I tried to post this it got eaten, so here we go...

In my 4+ years of dancing, I have yet to create a choreography of my own. All of my for performance dancing has been improvisation based. (I'm working on my first choreography now..)

When I was a beginner I hated learning choreographies. I thought they were boring and enjoyed learning individual moves and short combinations more.

Now as a lower level intermediate dancer, I really enjoy learning choreographies for several reasons.
They really help me to keep my footwork neat and clean, I've learned a lot about phrasing and where to put movements.
I really agree with the idea of choreographies being like books, the more you read the better your vocabulary.

One thing that I personally wish dance teachers would do more of is teach their students how to choreograph. It was a completely foreign concept to me and I'm sure to other people as well.

As far as group choreographies reflecting the spirit of MED, I've seen some that certainly have and some that definitely have not.

[quote]

Originally Posted by Tourbeau

Overemphasis of choreography can also encourage students to prioritize thinking over feeling.

What a great line!

Generally I do believe that some choreography has it's place, but I also think it can be over used as a 'quick fix' for teaching.

Someone close to me in the dance uses choreography alot and she is great at it. The thing is, I and others noticed that her students repeat the same phrasing over and over again in their own work. My friend has begun to realise this too and has reversed her use of choreographies and is now trying various other methods to get them to think out of this box and be 'themselves'.

I tend to take the point of view that choreography is good as a way of gaining ideas, linking movements and use of space etc.

What is not useful is situations where you find yourself being rushed through a choreography because the w/s is running out of time and the teacher is panicing...as this is the ultimate goal of the workshop regardless how crap you are at it.

Choreography is also a useful way of making students connect movement to music, when you explain about musical cues and highlights of the piece, why you are using that particular move in that place, how the melody repeats or repeats with a slight variation, how they can remember where they are because of what instrument is playing, and so on.

I fundamentally disagree with the idea that choreography prioritises thinking over feeling. The thinking part is only needed when the choreo is imperfectly learned. Once you (or your students) have *learned* the routine, thinking is less of a necessity, and the feeling can come through.

This applies equally to Improvisation. If your students are still in the stages of *learning* to improvise, they will spend most of their time worrying about OMG I can't think what to do next. They aren't feeling the music, or letting it guide their movements, any more than students dancing a choreography.

Good Improvisation, like Good Choreography, combines both Thought and Feeling.

Originally Posted by beafarhana

Choreography is also a useful way of making students connect movement to music, when you explain about musical cues and highlights of the piece, why you are using that particular move in that place, how the melody repeats or repeats with a slight variation, how they can remember where they are because of what instrument is playing, and so on.

very good point- and choreos can help those students not yet familiar with ME music get a feel for the phrasing and structure of a particular piece- of course that is less helpful when the choreo is done to a super short pop number with a drum machine & little to no variation quality of choreo matters!

I'm in my fifth year of studying bellydance. Dancing choreos for me is the best for fitness, transitions, mastering new moves and enjoying myself. I like the challenge, I like trying out the choices of master-dancers and some favourite moments stay with me and I can use them in my impro...a well composed choreo teaches you so much about using space, about answering the musical structures and the fact that I'm dancing, not just drilling, gives me an extra 20% more of energy to try and step out of my lazy-zone. For me learning and dancing choreo is the best training.

It seems to be fairly accepted that Middle Eastern dance is primarily an improvisational art, and I've certainly believed that in the past. However, all of the dancers from 'over there' that I've come across on the workshop circuit have performed and taught choreography. Modern Egyptian style, at the very least, seems to be choreographed. I remember Aida Nour saying, "Have 5 choreographies, and you'll never have to perform anything else." So it's simply not true that choreography is merely a Western tool.

It's interesting reading through the responses that suggest choreo is primarily useful in the beginner stages, as I tend to use it as a teaching tool more for my advanced dancers. I find it's a great way to teach a particular dance style, as you can set the dance to contain only that stylistic vocabulary of moves. I also find choreo useful to learn a particular dancer's style - it allows for a greater level of immersion than just learning technique. Choreo shows how they fit the moves to the music, what they emphasise, how it's all presented.

Having said that, I agree improv is an equally important skill to learn, both for students to gain a full understanding of this dance form, and for advanced dancers who will need to improvise well if they hope to dance professionally.

I agree with a lot of the points above. Choreography is a very useful tool, it can be used to help in a number of areas and learning to choreograph can be a great basis for learning to improvise. Personally I find the creative experience very similar, only in improv you have only one shot in front of an audience to create a great dance ..l;,

Like most here I have had a wide range of instructors. From my experience, full choreographies are less beneficial in beginner level classes where basic technique is still the learning objective; combos and very short routines where much more efficient. I know students like this, but I don't think beginner level classes should teach full choreos to perform them at a recital. The focus should be on perfecting technique which will serve them better in the long run than a 5 minute choreo. I found full choreo's take too much class time just to learn and memorize before you can get to the point where you can get back to perfecting the steps with in it that could be used to learn, perfect and drill movements.

I think full choreos are better suited to students at the next level. But that is the second problem.....in my experience a lot of instructors don't explain the background or building steps, the relation to the music or really use to as a tool. Even in workshops most instructors race through to teach 4 or 5 minutes and expect that we are going to "learn how they relate to the music" by just doing it. Only a select few have actually slowed down and explained the movements or music and personally I got A LOT more out of them.

Originally Posted by jewelbellydance

It's interesting reading through the responses that suggest choreo is primarily useful in the beginner stages, as I tend to use it as a teaching tool more for my advanced dancers. I find it's a great way to teach a particular dance style, as you can set the dance to contain only that stylistic vocabulary of moves. I also find choreo useful to learn a particular dancer's style - it allows for a greater level of immersion than just learning technique. Choreo shows how they fit the moves to the music, what they emphasise, how it's all presented.

Haha, must have been reading your mind while I wrote! ..g.:

Not all choreo is prefigured down to each gesture. I think it's great to teach easy choreos and give some options to choose in between for the students, so they can try out to be spontaneous or else realize what would be their favourite move in places.

Originally Posted by tahiradancer

Now, the truth is that many people are very uncomfortable being put into that spot and do want the safety net of a choreo. The other, possibly more relevant question is this: what is the goal of the class? If it is mainly recreational, then what is the point of doing something - improv - which makes most beginning dancers very uncomfortable? At least on a regular basis? I have spoken to a few women who have left their belly dance classes because their teacher was asking them to improv and the students were so uncomfortable.

I don't see the problem of being one where everyone must conform to the same comfort zones and goals, but one of presenting the truth more candidly. Lots of students are only in class for a weekly hour of recreation, and they don't practice at home. No one is afraid of the idea that 99.9% of students will not be able to achieve any significant professional success without practicing outside of class. Improv training is a requirement for stage competence. If you want to be a Shakespearian actor, you still have to study improv. You don't have to love it, you don't have to want to audition for Second City, but you have to face it anyway in the name of honing your craft. Our dance isn't any different. Regardless of whether you never want to improvise on stage and never want to perform to live music, improv is still part of the curriculum--and for good reason. Even the best designed, most thoroughly rehearsed choreographies are not immune to the risk of errant props, costume malfunctions, music glitches, memory blackouts, audience distractions, and so on. Any dancer with intent to perform needs to practice how to graciously extricate herself from such situations on stage without panicking. Any student with intent to teach someday needs to know how to think on her feet and come up with sensible new exercises for students to practice. Any student in class to "find herself" has to step out of the framework of how someone else thinks and express her own unique thoughts and feelings, not just varying degrees of personalizing the teacher's ideas. These are the skills you learn from improv.

If you aspire to anything more than being a student who shows up once a week at class for a laugh or a bit of exercise, you have to spend at least a little time practicing improv in front of others. How many teachers are blunt enough to tell students, "It doesn't matter if improv scares you and makes you self conscious. You WILL NOT be good enough to be a real professional if you don't do this. You are choosing to opt out of fulfilling your own potential for being the best dancer you can, when you decide to opt out of this part of the learning process. It's entirely your choice, just like practicing at home, but be prepared to accept its consequences"?

[Continued...]

There are a few other areas of professional competence that come into play here. One, other dancers respect a dancer who can improv well more than one who is limited to only doing choreography well. They may still respect the one who does only choreography a whole lot, but there is a special admiration reserved for performers who can dance spectacularly off the top of their heads. Two, fear of improv in class says something about a student's naive expectations of performing. If a student won't/can't improv in class in front of classmates out of fear of harsh judgment or self consciousness, what does she think will happen on stage? If you never want to perform, fine, but if you think you are ready or entitled to be on stage, don't delude yourself. Not being willing to take a chance on expressing yourself in class in no way inoculates you against audiences of catty dancers and eye-rolling members of the GP. Furthermore, how can you expect to be fully engaged in the moment and emotionally available to your audience in performance if you can't practice opening up in a low-pressure situation?

Originally Posted by beafarhana

I fundamentally disagree with the idea that choreography prioritises thinking over feeling. The thinking part is only needed when the choreo is imperfectly learned. Once you (or your students) have *learned* the routine, thinking is less of a necessity, and the feeling can come through.

I was speaking more of the process of creating choreography, not performing a routine that is well rehearsed. In my experience, similar to what Mahsima said up thread, beginners often do not have the vaguest idea how to start creating a routine that will be used for non-improvised performance. It is writer's block to the extreme--a whole blank song full of "where to start?" and "everything I try feels stupid." I personally wasted months of my own development begging a teacher to teach us "how to choreograph," before finally giving up and wandering off to figure it out on my own. There's always a lot of trial and error in finding your artistic voice, and I respect that, but you can tell which students are working "in" and which are working "out." A student who starts into the choreographic process with the premise that she wants to use that combo from the Aziza workshop, and the middle part from the choreography that the class performed at the last Renn Faire, and those hip accents from the Sadie drum solo on YouTube,... is most likely going to create an "over-thought" piece, instead of an organic one. The music should lead the dance, not the other way around.

You are right that a rehearsed choreography can free up a dancer to experience the piece and/or interact with the audience at a deeper level, but that requires conscious effort on the part of the dancer to channel energy in that direction. Without that intention, rehearsed choreography can easily come across as disconnected, mindless, and "going through the motions."

Originally Posted by zumarrad

....To me as a student and as a teacher, choreographies are like reading material in a new language. Baby beginner choreos are "Run, Spot, run!" Master teachers' choreos are novels and short stories. The more I learn to read, theoretically, the better my ability to write in said language will be....

this ^_^

Originally Posted by NazirahDances

I studied ATS solely for a year early on and that helped me to "think on the fly" and set me up for better being able to follow the bouncing butt in my current Egyptian classes. At this point, I find the Bouncing Butt method MUCH more useful to me now. . . and this method has really helped me "get" the music and really get a great feel for dancing too it.

hehe, i think the same thing, A/ITS helps with follow the bouncing butt. BUT i really think that method should NOT be used for beginners. it's fine if you're learning social dance from your mom/aunt, etc to learn by imitation, but when you're practicing the way Westerners do (repeating movements for long periods of time, dancing weekly in class) as opposed to dancing now and again at festivities, you greatly increase the likely hood that bad technique will result in injury. so for it to be practiced this way i think it's very important for beginners to have the vocab broken down.
your post reminded me of this because the ATS class i took was a beginner class taught via the bouncing butt, even though i knew there were cues they were never taught, and there were fundamental errors in how things like hip circles were taught (or not taught...?) that left my classmates complaining of low back pain.

Originally Posted by Lauren_

I've gone back and forth on this issue. I teach choreography a LOT. I think it suits beginners and intermediate students to learn choreo, but at some point they want to learn to bop around at a hafla. And anyone who wants to go pro and dance in restaurant & private party situations needs to be able to improvise.

i started with DVDs, none of which had choreographies. my first few teachers didn't teach them either, so i had to learn to improvise if i was going to do anything other than drill. we never had improv practice in class, until the teacher i'm still with and have been for some time, i just would hear something in the music that made me dance to it when i was trying to drill. i used to get mad at myself for letting myself be distracted, but then i started with my current teacher and was told i have a knack for interpreting the music.
in a workshop where she taught a choreo to Ishatar Alabina's Spanish fusion Habibi Ya Einy i was one of the only people who noticed how she was fitting it to the music, even the basic thing like her putting the Spanish dance steps when the music was Spanish and bellydance where she was singing in Arabic escaped most people because they were concentrating on learning the steps. because i had no intention of remembering the choreography i was able to pay attention to this.
this teacher also makes it clear that she doesn't want us to become her clones. she says if someone sees her student and can tell from their dancing that she is their teacher, she did something wrong. i agree with that philosophy
it might be uncomfortable at first (maybe i like improv because for me it evolved organically out of the urge to dance and in the privacy of my own home) but ultimately i think it adds so much more for the student that it makes it worth it many many many many times over, and they just need to listen to the teacher when she tells them (hopefully ^_~) that it's ok to not get it at first and to give it time.

for me, i basically drilled for around a year, then spontaneously started improvising around the end of that time. i didn't learn a single choreography until i'd been dancing for about 2 1/2 years. i think for most people it would be boring as hell to drill for an entire year before actually dancing. and that starting improv early on is important to preventing that fear of it (you're not good at anything yet if you start it from the beginning. if you have expectations of yourself later on, like "i should get this!" or "i know how to dance" then it will be harder to accept the mistakes you make improvising, imo)

i think it's important to explain to the students what they should be getting out of any given exercise, including the choreography you're teaching.

i think the answer to so many people saying "im torn" is in moderation (yay Buddah! he's always right! ^_~) and in proper use of both tools, improv and choreo.