Thread: Any Improv Snobs here?

I can do a choreography, but it's so much more difficult for me than improv. I've had two teachers - one that focused on choreographies, and the other that hated choreographies with a passion. I find that as I practice and train, I vastly prefer improv as a dance method.

So who else here loves to improv and does it regularly? What do you like about it vs choreographies? Do you see improv (as I was led to believe that choreography is a very, very recent thing in the world of bellydance) as 'coming back', or has it never left?

As I've watched dancers, I've been able to tell when it's choreographed versus when it's improved, and to be honest, I find that only the very, very skilled dancers pull off choreography well - otherwise the precision makes it look mechanical and lifeless....something I've never associated with bellydance.

So that makes me an improv snob. How about you fine folks?

I love choreography, I love a good choreography and I love making them. I find it difficult to stick to a choreography when I'm in the moment as a soloist, so I rarely do. I also have a harder time choreographing for myself, as opposed to choreographing for my troupe or for students. So I'm almost exclusively an improviser as a soloist. I love that when you are in the moment wonderful things can happen, but some part of me thinks I would be a better dancer overall if I used choreography to stretch myself as a performer. As an audience member, I just love watching great dancing and great dances, it doesn't matter if they are choreographed or not.

I love improv - and left to myself it's all I'd do ... but ... if I'm dancing for dancers I often go for a choreography from one of my teachers - to show what I have been learning. And I think although it's obvious it is a choreography I don't think when I do them they are mechanical. Maybe its because I sometimes make little changes on the fly, maybe its because I don't bring them out unless I know they are smooth or maybe it's my fantastic personality projection

With groups of students it is always choreography. To make a group look good - and every person in the group - it needs to be pinned down. Now, I have seen professional level jazz dancers improvise in a group and it works - so in theory you could do it with belly dance but it'd take a very deep understanding of the dance - and your troupe mates. (Personally I don't call what Tribal groups do "improvisation" - more follow the leader within a clearly specified movement vocabulary)

And, yes, traditionally it was all improvisiation.

I'm a total improv dancer. I love improv. To me, that is belly dancing. I can do choreo and have done so for troupes and students. However, I think solo dancers should be able to improv.

It's ironic you posted this thread just now. I was just watching several clips on youtube of competition dancers and I thought to myself, if I competed in today's competitions with the heavy emphasis on choreo, I would probably never ever place!

I think many of today's dancers have much more better form and posture then us old timers. They are so beautiful in their precision.

But they seem to lack an essence and soul and personality that made me fall in love with belly dance in the first place.

Improv all the way. I prefer the spontaneity of "in the moment". I agree that choreo is excellent for getting "exactly" the right move at the right spot, but I love that that happens when dancing on the fly, as well. I love that I can dance to a song differently every time...it keeps the songs "fresh" and exciting for me.

I don't know if I'm a "snob" about it but I dance improv when I solo, which coincides nicely with my passion for live music. I try to have a structure in mind for certain parts of the music, and a planned entrance, ending and exit.

I admire people who do choreography really well, I'm just not one of those people. I like to get lost in the moment.

I improvise when I solo, but since I'm in a professional troupe, I also need to be able to dance well to choreography and make it look fresh and exciting. I have found it nearly impossible to chorograph for myself, because I mainly dance in a restaurant. I don't know if the restaurant will be half empty or packed, where people will be sitting, when a waiter is going to come through, etc. I have some general ideas of a few parts of a piece (enter with veil, really hit those 3 accents, end with a spin and pose), but not specific movements, directions, etc.

What I have found, watching myself dance on video (the horror!) is that I perform below my skill level. I think that since I teach Levels 1-3 (beginning through advanced intermediate)- those are the movements that get reinforced in my muscle memory most often, and so when I'm improvising, that's what I do. To combat that, I AM trying to choreograph for myself. It's a huge challenge, especially since I am attempting to choreograph things that are really hard for me (to give me things to work on and meet those challenges). When I perform the pieces that I have choreographed for myself, I don't perform the choreography (I like to dance in the moment), but I do try to use some of the things that were in the choreography. I think it's working, to some extent.

Not an improv snob, just very supportive of my apparent inability to remember choreography. At all.

Major league improv'er here. I'm not snobby about it, I love a good choreo and it's an absolute fact and probably requirement of the biggest stars of our dance nowadays.

I... just don't DO choreos. They're hard. They require me to focus and think and do things the same way each time. I'm not good at that when I just want to be noodling, feeling the music, and reacting to the audience. BUT, it IS also lazy, and I do recognise that I dance better when I've practised more and know the song inside out - which isn't truly improv-ing. It's loosely structured choreography really, I guess.

None of my early teachers emphasized improv in class, and the teacher I spent the most time with had some reservations about quality in terms of her students doing improv in performance. Fair enough, most people aren't born world-class dancers, and when they start doing improv, it probably won't be as good as some choreography that a famous teacher taught at a workshop or on a DVD...but if you never leave the nest, you're never going to learn to fly, and holding students back for fear they won't be high quality right out of the gate isn't perhaps the best strategy. (FWIW, we're talking mostly about recitals and hafla performances, not paid gigs where you'd be experimenting with your evolving skills in front of paying GP customers here.) As a result, my improv experience has been pretty limited. You can dance around your house all you want, but it's not the same as improvising in front of a real audience. I would rather do improv than choreography, but for me, it's been a slow, stumbling process that started way later than it should have.

Choreography fills a need. Students who are intimidated by the idea of creating a performance on their own like the security of it. The scarcity of live music means many students never need the skills to adapt on the fly to music that changes. If you're going to dance in a group, you can't put a free-for-all on stage. I agree that it is very difficult for the average student to fully inhabit someone else's musical vision, and even when it's their own choreography, it can look over-thought and flat. But choreography as the dominant expression of the dance is probably here to stay, unless the live music situation reverses.

Haha you already know my feelings on choreography Minajen...I don't like doing it as a soloist. Hate it. In a group, choreography looks great and makes me feel less mechanical because it ends up looking like a uniform group of dancers. That's awesome! However...by myself, I can't ever STICK to a choreo nor do I want to. Choreography isn't BAD it's just not for me. Choreo doesn't make anyone less of a dancer for doing it, it just means they are more comfortable, learn better, and can therefore produce a more high quality dance using that method.

Originally Posted by wigglewhiz

I... just don't DO choreos. They're hard. They require me to focus and think and do things the same way each time. I'm not good at that when I just want to be noodling, feeling the music, and reacting to the audience. BUT, it IS also lazy, and I do recognise that I dance better when I've practised more and know the song inside out - which isn't truly improv-ing. It's loosely structured choreography really, I guess.

Hehe, I've always heard that called "structured improv" ;-) Just because someone is improving doesnt mean they shouldnt know the music inside and out. My teacher teaches improv, and that is how we approach it in class. We learn the music, we learn what work with different parts of the music or with different moods of the music. We learn to react to it instinctively. I certainly structure my improv and while I might always choose to do traveling steps in a certain part of the music because that is what it is telling me to do, I might not always choose the SAME traveling steps.

Of course, dancing with live music can make things tricky, but if you understand that STYLE of music well enough, you can still know what is coming next and know what to do when it comes.

Originally Posted by norma

I'm a total improv dancer. I love improv. To me, that is belly dancing. I can do choreo and have done so for troupes and students. However, I think solo dancers should be able to improv.

It's ironic you posted this thread just now. I was just watching several clips on youtube of competition dancers and I thought to myself, if I competed in today's competitions with the heavy emphasis on choreo, I would probably never ever place!

I think many of today's dancers have much more better form and posture then us old timers. They are so beautiful in their precision.

But they seem to lack an essence and soul and personality that made me fall in love with belly dance in the first place.

You are right that is what i think too!

Right now I am working on a choreo well my teacher made it for me. I love it because it challenges me; but at the same time it was made for me and it has things in it that I do when I improv dance. I feel that dancers need to dance the choreo so much that it is them and what they do naturally not trying to be any one else or there teacher and once they have it memorized in the body then they can add there soul and emotion to the moves and really get in to the feeling. I have been working on mine for 6 months and I am just now putting in feels. I think choreos are a great tool to help improve your improv. and also great for group work when it looks fun and natural not just a tech display.

Improv. I have a HELL of a time remembering choreographies!

It's encouraging to me that there are excellent dancers out there that still have a hard time with choreography! I think some people are naturally wired for one or the other. My troupe very occassionally uses choreography, but it is generally based on our improv vocab. I just performed in my teacher's student show and our class did a choreography. It was SO HARD and I felt completely stupid. One of the things I'm working on this year is trying to learn better in general. I think I am picking things up quicker but I still have such a hard time with choreography. I feel much more at ease with improv.

I don't think I qualify as an improv "snob", but I do prefer it. I also think that dancers in my local community (Austin) are REALLY lucky as we have a wide variety of talented instructors and performers, and some emphasize improv, others, choreography. I've had the pleasure of studying with a number of them, and I know it helped me a lot in this department.

I giggled at myself a little when I realized I had an epiphany about choreography lately, that my relationship with it has improved, or rather maybe I've improved a bit as a dancer. I have never had a hard time doing choreo, it's just that when I first got a REAL taste of belly dance in the first couple of years I started studying it, something in my gut said, "this stuff wasn't intended to be choreographed unless you're in a group". I try to do a nice blend of improv and choreographed combinations. At times my mentality about choreo probably qualified me as an improv snob, but like they say, there is enough room out there for all of us.

I will admit though, I have to agree with the person who mentioned above that the amazing precision of the top modern belly dancers we all know and love is phenomenal to watch, but it starts to feel like the spirit and soul of belly dance is diminished a little when every step they take on stage is fully choreographed, beginning to end. It's a catch-22. They are AMAZING in their precision, and I really do believe they are helping to elevate our art somehow, but the soulful passion of the dance just feels *different* when it's all choreographed, you know?

And by the way, GREAT discussion.

I trained in ballet from the time I was 3 until I was 24. I LOATH choreography! Mental block, can't do it! last time I competed, I did 2 categories. One I used a well known choreography, the other structured improv. I scored almost 2 points higher on the structured improv!

That having been said, I am a soloist. I have only once been asked to join a troupe, so it hasn't been imperative that I remember and perform choreography in years. I respect people who are good at it. Our Nasila is an amazing choreographer. Me? Not so much and I am fine with that!

{{{HUGS}}}

I am not an improv snob; I am a realist who has come to the realization that I am more comfortable improvising when I perform solo.

I have performed many, many choreographed numbers with a class or with a troupe. Being an excessively analytical, downright retentive person, one would think I prefer to dance a choreography. But I don't. I actually had a deep struggle with this -- when I "see" a performance in my head, I swear a temporary choreographer steps in and has everything perfectly, precisely planned for me . . . but my feet can't seem to catch up.

After a while, I realized that learning to dance is a lot like learning a language. You are learning to communicate with a new (movement) vocabulary and with a new grammar (the styling).

Dancing someone else's choreography is a lot like reciting someone else's speech, or poem. If anyone asks you a question, you have to go "off script" and make something up. And, then you might lose the character you have worked so hard to present.

But, improv is not babbling -- it is still saying SOMETHING, just with a different intent. In this case, you still have a clear message to convey, you may just take longer to get there or tell a side story while you go along.

I became a lot more comfortable thinking about my dance this way. I still have to have an intention, to organize my thoughts. I still think about what I want the audience to remember, what impression I want to create.

Think of it this way: we all find that we occasionally have to introduce ourselves when we meet someone new. If you haven't done it in a while, or you didn't know you were going to have to do it, you will probably fumble some pieces, or leave some stuff out, because you were not prepared. But, if you do it all the time, you will still never say the same thing the same way twice; but, you are more prepared to respond to the new person's questions or throw in something that THEY would be interested because it came up in that conversation.

Improvised dancing, when well done, is like having a conversation. You know who you are and how you feel about things, you are in the moment and interacting with your audience. You have something to tell them, and while you may embellish here and not there based on your mood, you KNOW what ideas you want to convey. And, when they bring up something unexpected, you can handle it deftly, and get back to your point.

Which is just about the same as saying,
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
and sorry I could not travel both . . ."
(with sincere apologies to Robert Frost!)

For someone who is pretty muchan improv dancer, knowing that competetors that have polished choreographies tend to score better is a terrifying thought.

I have great trouble with choreographies (combination of bad memory and distractability, plus the temptation to interact with audience when I can) so I think of a choreography more as a structure.
I know that if I purely improvise my dance is less varied as I tend to regress to favourite moves a lot. On the other hand if I am trying to remember a detailed choreography I think my attention is not in the right place, and I am less relaxed.
So my compromise is to choreograph in quite a lot of detail beforehand but then when performing I think of the dance as a "quilt": There are certain points in which I will use the planned moves because they are SO perfectly right that they seemed to be "stitched down" like a bit of quilting. In between the fabric flows a bit freely and I can deviate as much as I wish. But the fact that I have a bit of structure (quilting) here and there prevents me from drifting into unadventurous moves or losing my energy or direction.
I am sure that better and more experienced dancers can manage without this structure - it probably works in their heads spontaneously - but this is my experience

Things look very different from our nordic perspective. Most people, even the very seasoned, skilled and known dancers perform choreo -- their own or one from the big stars -- even as soloists. And manage to make the dances look interesting, in my opinion. Mostly these performances happen on big stages; restaurant gigs etc. are extremely rare around here. Also, it takes a lot of performance and dancing experience to make improvisation look interesting and varied, especially in a big space.

I am actually very surprised how many of you experienced dancers find it hard just to remember a choreography. Memorizing is a lot of hard work, sure, but afterwards starts the fun part of practising, polishing and dancing!

Every workshop teacher teaching a choreography always says that you're supposed to "make it your own", not just copy and mechanically count.

Just to clarify: If you feel like an improvisational dancer and are skilled and experienced at it, excellent and go for it!

I just hope no one reading this thread is getting inspiration to use "bad memory" as an excuse. Memory is a skill like any other. It gets better everytime you use it.

i prefer improv...i have a hard time remembering choreos...but i do like the idea of planned improv...some parts choreographed, and some improved...a combo of both :)

Choreographies are difficult for me to follow but students should be taught at least basic sequences so they can learn to string together certain movements and transitions. A good improv comes from understanding your vocabulary which is learned with drills and repetition, and small choreographies :)

As much as I like improv - I really think learning choreography is part of a dancer's bag of skills. Reasons for finding it hard could include the way your brain works, attempting something way beyond your technical ability, poor teaching, widely different style from your norm, complex staging (if you are teaching inexperienced dancers a choreography do not start with a circle, different sequences or lots of direction changes - teach it straight first then tweak), insuffiecient repetition, and insufficent experience.

You get better by trying more choreographies from a range of teachers; by doing them - over and over. Don't use your analytical brain to start with - just go with the flow and go and go. At the Brisbane intensive we would learn up to three choreographies in an 5-hour day. Then again the next day, and the next , and the next, over eight days. Most of these I never looked at again - but they drilled movement patterns and musicality into the subconscious. And the following year it was easier and easier still the year after.

What I'm saying is by repetition you don't just learn the choreography - you learn how to learn choreography. But you also need the technical skill so you are not struggling with the technique when you should be training your muscle memory.