musical breakdown for choreography.

[dancingleaf]

does anyone have tips for breaking down music for the purposes of constructing a choreography.

if a song has lyrics - I can generally break it down into verses, chorus and instrumental segments and deconstruct the music that way.  but I'm working with a song right now that has no lyrics and no real discernible repeating segments.  it more or less continually repeats with a few segments thrown in here and there.

if I was doing it on my own I'd just improv the whole thing and do whatever I felt like - but that doesn't work when you are TEACHING it.

I talked to my mentor about it and she had these suggestions - she said people are either right brain or left brained  in their approach to choreography. 

What she does is count out the entire (4 minute in this case) song in 8 counts - this is not really working for me.  I tried but I lose the count in a few different places.  plus it's just awkward and weird. 

She also said that there's another dancer she knows that puts the music on and dances it/video tapes it.  Decides what she likes where - then constructs the choreography from that.   This may work for me because I'm more improv focussed. 

Since I am now tired of listening to the music and trying to count out the beats I am now going to burn yet another CD with the music on it (in segments) and attempt the improv  approach to choreography.

Comments

[tangyapple.livejournal.com]

I'd say choose a different song or maybe just break it up into 30-second segments and work from there. I do the 8-count thing, myself, but that only really works with songs that are 4/4 timing or something similar.

I know that's probably not much help ....