Technique, Style, and Choreography

Often these ideas are collapsed into one idea or concept in dancing (it happens in other styles too, not just ballroom). I think it’s important to separate them out to really understand what is going on, and learn most effectively.

Technique

Technique is really the practice and training of proper, healthy movement. It’s about the quality of the movement. Common concepts in this are: moving from the center, alignment of the bones/joints, sequencing of movements, functions of joints, balance use of muscles, strength, and so on. At the base of it, the simplest level, it’s about health of the body and health of movement, moving up the challenge/skill level, it’s about speed, efficiency, grace, and power. This is all one continuum of range.

We all have an in built feeling for what is good movement. We can all see someone move and think, “oooo… ouch, I bet that hurts…” or “that doesn’t look comfortable”. And no matter what you have actually trained in dance, you’re probably right. Trust your instincts. We can also see the far range – we can look at an athlete and appreciate how wonderfully smooth, easy, and powerfully they move. It’s probably written into our DNA to recognize these things.

In ballroom dancing we have a book “The Technique of Ballroom Dancing”. Perhaps misleading though, because it’s not really technique at all, but really choreography. Yes, perhaps having written so many details about this step or that and by careful analysis and comparison of them all you could piece out some elements of technique. (And there are coaches out there that will teach just such analysis.) But in the end, this is not really technique, this is just the steps, and nothing can replace the value of simply training for good movement. In fact most of the details in the book will happen easily and without effort or stress if they are just done with good movement.

Hmmm… someone should come up with a systematic way of training good movement. Break things down to their fundamental movements – moving forward, backward, sideways, up, down, lifting the leg, lifting the arms, turning, jumping. Maybe someone could make a lot of money from that. Oh, wait, somebody already came up with that 300 years ago – it’s ballet and people don’t give it the credit that it’s due.

Style

Technique is how you do things for the health of your body – it is universal across different dance types (ballet, modern, ballroom) and movement types (martial arts, sports, yoga, pilates). Style is how you do things that don’t effect or compromise the technique. It can be about creating a feeling, personality, attitude, difference, or quality of being. Technique is just a tool to train and allow your body to do style and choreography.

How do you create a style? There are an infinite number of things the body can do but you can’t do all of them no matter how long your dance is. Why not choose just a particular set of things that you do movement-wise? It is in the choice that we create style.

Some people have created their style as unconscious choice. They perform certain sports, certain actions again and again. It’s not that some other choice would not be as technically correct, it’s just the way they do it. Some dance schools teach a specific set of exercises and in the same time that they might be teaching technique they also teach a specific style. Martha Graham is a style. Cuttingham is a style. Vaganova is a style.

Want to develop your style more (and your understanding of style)? A great exercise is to take a list of a variety of different movements. (Laban is great for this – read “Modern Educational Dance”. Or simply the list of dance positions out of the Latin “technique” book.) Cut the list in half. Then make a dance from what is remaining. Repeat again but do it from the half of the list that you cut. Repeat again with a different list.

Choreography

Choreography is the actual movement that is done. Put together in a combination over time. It is the complete piece or just parts. It relies on style to create differences across time. (How boring are those pieces that are too monotonic in style!) And relies on technique to make it first just comfortable to watch and secondly to allow it to be executed.