Tip of the Month: Choreography
The Fae Circus Student Showcase is just over two months away! We cannot wait to see what our hardworking students come up with.
Our May Tip of the Month is all about Choreography, and technically more than one tip. Bonus!
First off, let’s talk stamina. To keep from tiring yourself out, try to sequence your skills in a way that doesn’t require you to climb up and down the apparatus too many times. Unless the skill you are trying to showcase is a unique climb of some kind. If that’s the case, be sure to take your time to allow the audience to enjoy. Milk any skill that you choose to add to your piece. Pause, and add a flourish with your hands or find and hold a shape. Don’t forget to find resting poses and add the vibe of the character you have created to align with your act.
If you are new to aerial and don’t have a large repertoire of skills to pull from, consider repeating your sequence during song refrains. And while it can be tempting to add all your newest skills to your routine, especially when you don’t have a large repertoire, your performance should be 90% skills you are confident that you can do consistently. Pushing too many new or unfamiliar skills in your piece can make it exhausting and stressful. This should be fun and you can always put those skills into a performance in the future!
For music, be sure to practice your choreography to your music A LOT! That means picking a song and sticking with it. Yes, we are talking to you, and we have all been guilty of it. Practicing to your music helps the choreography to stick in your brain so that on the day of the performance, your routine feels like second nature. The music will help to queue you when it’s time to transition or tell you where you should be in your routine to help you stay on track so you don’t finish too early or late. You can also find “beats”, meaning you will do a certain skill or transition at a specific time, which will help you to stay on track. We also recommend earbuds that won’t fall out of your ear. There is nothing more frustrating than getting halfway through your piece and losing your music.
Next, if you have created a character for your piece, think about that persona and then correspond your music and movements to match. Make a conscious choice for all that you do. Don’t just execute the skills robotically. The way you move is how you give life to the performance. Do you want your feet pointed or flexed? Are your movements heavy and slow? Are they light and bouncy? Are you flowy or dynamic?
Lastly, while we talked a lot about the importance of music and movement, the skills you choose are still important. If you are performing on aerial hoop, you want to think of your entry, a combination of skills in the hoop, as well as below and on top, a pinnacle pose, and your exit. If performing aerial silks, choose a climb, think of combinations of upright and inverted poses, or maybe linking two of your favorite sequences in a unique way, and choose a descent for the end.
We hope these tips will help you when creating your choreography! Showcase is always such a special time at the studio and we always want to support our students any way we can. Let us know if you have any other questions or need additional help in your creation process.