How To Choreograph Lyrical Dance

Title: Medicine 

Song: “Medicine” by Daughter 

Choreography: Will Brighton 

Dancers: Carmen Alvarez and Will Brighton 

Overall, this project has been an interesting experience. In high school, I grew up surrounded by lyrical but I had never actually choreographed much in that style, as I usually leaned towards more contemporary works. Upon researching the genre, I have realized that the few lyrical works I ever performed or tried to choreograph weren’t actually even lyrical, they were more contemporary or just slow jazz. Similarly, I discovered that a couple of the dances I performed in middle school before even knowing about lyrical were actually very much in the lyrical genre.

Trying to choreograph my own work for this project turned out to be more difficult than I thought. I imagined it wouldn’t be too hard given the connection lyrical has to the music and the slow and simple quality of the movements, which in fairness these were rather simple aspects of the choreographic process. However, putting together a piece turned out to be quite difficult once I realized how much lyrical is often mixed with other genres and that creating a dance that was still to be interesting in dynamics and vocabulary was going to be challenging since I was attempting to create a lyrical dance in it’s purist form. This meant I was not able to include isolations or sharp contrasting movements or use the innovative vocabulary found in contemporary dance. I was trapped into having to find ways of creating interest even without being able to contrast against fluid movements in the ways I am used to or being able to use my usual movement vocabularies that I am used to.

I ended up choosing to choreograph a duet rather than a solo in order to allow for more possibilities to draw interest through dynamics since I wasn’t able to rely on these sharp contrasting movements that I am used to. The process of picking the song involved going through an extensive music library to find a list of roughly ten songs that I felt could produce a good lyrical dance. This took about a week to do, leaving me with only a couple days to proceed with the process of actually choreographing the dance. Upon selecting the music and deciding I wanted a duet, I had to select who I wanted to be in my piece. I ended up choosing a friend of mine, Carmen Alvarez, who I partner with in the department’s ballet. I chose her for her strong ballet technique and because we had both already built up a trust and understanding of how to partner with each other. Having someone who I was already very familiar with made it much easier to choreograph the piece. 

I started the choreographic process by myself in a small studio, just listening to the music to try and interpret the emotions while generating movements and phrases that I felt embodied the essence of both the song and the genre of lyrical dance. This process took me about two hours to create the first main phrase of movement, which ended up being about a minute of choreography. The following day, I began working with Carmen on developing the rest of the movement phrases and working out technicalities in the lifts I had come up with. I worked with Carmen on this for about an hour and a half before we had a finished piece ready to be filmed.

The process as a whole ended up taking a lot less time than I expected based on previous choreographic experiences, which was likely due to how slow and connected the movements were by nature of the genre, making it easier to come up with longer phrases. I was actually rather impressed at how the quality of the video and the choreography turned out given such little time. However, if I ever were to choreograph in this style again, or even have the opportunity to continue working on this piece, I would make sure I had more time available to really consider all of my options as a choreographer and especially to rehearse the piece. As a style that is mostly found in studios and competitions, you can guarantee that almost any lyrical dance that is being performed has gone through hours of rigorous cleaning and rehearsing, which I just did not have given the deadline and dancer availability.

Netting, Leslie D. “Lyrical Jazz Dance Defined.” Lyrical Jazz Dance Defined: Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance: Vol 69, No 5. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2016.

Editor, eHow. "How To Choreograph A Lyrical Dance | Ehow". eHow. N. p., 2016. Web. 5 Dec. 2016. 

Fisher, Jennifer. "When Good Adjectives Go Bad: The Case of So-called Lyrical Dance." Dance Chronicle 37.3 (2014): 312-34. Web.