S1 Ep13 Dance Workshop (Choreography as Set and Setting Steps)

S1 Ep13 Dance Workshop (Choreography as Set and Setting Steps)

In this session, we focus on choreography in its most familiar sense: choreography as set material, as steps that can be repeated, remembered, ordered, and followed. Building on the previous episode’s exploration of what choreography is and where it comes from, this workshop turns toward how choreography is made concrete through steps, phrases, and sequences.

The workshop begins with a sustained repetition of a single, simple movement. By repeating one step for an extended duration, attention is drawn to how a movement is initiated, what elements of it are essential, and how repetition relies on memory, sensation, and bodily awareness. This exercise foregrounds the labour of precision and the difficulty of doing “the same thing” again and again.

From there, the session opens into improvisation, inviting participants to notice when steps begin to emerge from free movement. Rather than deciding steps in advance, the focus is on recognising how movements become identifiable, repeatable, and potentially part of a sequence.

The workshop then shifts toward consciously setting choreography. Participants create a short sequence of steps and observe how they remember, order, and connect movements. Attention is given to decision-making around transitions, timing, spacing, and orientation, as well as the different tools that can support memorisation and composition, such as writing, counting, recording, or visual reference.

Finally, the session addresses choreography as something that can exist outside oneself, by copying and following an external source such as a video or written description. This brings questions of authority, accuracy, control, and interpretation into focus, asking where choreography actually resides when steps are set and followed.

The session closes with a reflective task that turns away from strict execution and toward description. By describing movement qualities in words, participants are invited to consider how language itself can influence, prompt, and shape dancing, without fixing it into a rigid form.

Linda Wardal: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2251240/episodes/14185052

Dance workshop
Explore, imagine, move.

A companion series to PETER, dance with. These short audio workshops invite you to explore dance through imagination, movement, and curiosity. A space to rethink what dance can be, anywhere, for anyone.

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