Is learning choreography quickly an acquired skill?

July 1, 2009 8:39 PM

Is learning choreography quickly an acquired skill?

Professional dancers can often pick up choreography after seeing it just once, even if it's fairly complicated. Is this a talent they're born with, or can it be learned? Obviously, some amount of learning is involved either way - I'm just wondering how much.

posted by nj554 to media & arts (13 comments total)

A friend in college once won a bet and made me attend her step class. It was advanced step, and there was nobody there that wasn't a ballet major.

The first 20 minutes were horrible...but towards the end...I was able to follow along well enough to not make my attendance the most effective method of birth control ever.

Its acquired...I had to endure 60 minutes of humiliation to get it...but oh yeah...its acquired.
posted by hal_c_on at 8:44 PM on July 1

I asked a dancer this once, too. Her answer was that years of practice had given her an understanding of dance as variations on themes, so she could look at something and go, "Oh yeah, this is just like X, but instead of doing Y at that one point in the middle, you do Z, and your hands go like this..." And then the music kind of indicates where to hit your marks.

It's like being a good chef isn't about memorizing recipes -- it's knowing the fundamentals, being acquainted with culinary themes and knowing basic ratios of ingredients. I imagine it's the same with music -- there's only so many strings on that guitar, after all.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:48 PM on July 1 [1 favorite has favorites]

Sounds just like the sort of thing that is addressed in Gladwell's Blink. IIRC as you become an expert through years of practice in a field you can analyze what you see in a blink.
posted by cftarnas at 9:01 PM on July 1 [1 favorite has favorites]

Most definitely, yes, it can be acquired. That's the only way it can be done. The more experience you have in specific forms, such as a kind of dance, the better you get at picking up choreography.
posted by chrisinseoul at 10:15 PM on July 1

There's also a process of counting beats. If you break each series into an 8 count you've made it much easier. Instead of an endless series you're grouping data.
posted by 26.2 at 10:30 PM on July 1

Cool Papa Bell has it right -- it's a lot like learning a language, or computer programming. You have a large toolbox of fundamental moves. These you should have down fluently. Choreography is essentially composing sentences with those moves. Some things don't go together, some things aren't intuitive, most things make sense to an experienced dancer. I could push this metaphor quite a bit, but will stop there.

A dancer watching another dancer will immediately break the moves down fundamentally, note the steps, note the balance, note the rhythm. Most choreography has similiar larger structures, as well. You won't know these moves or structures without training and practice, though. If you take intro dance classes you should notice this. You'll start with some basic moves, which the teacher will then combine in different ways. Every new move creates a much larger set of combinations.
posted by FuManchu at 11:02 PM on July 1

Yes, it's acquired. Some people (and some professional dancers) are naturally better at it than others, but dance is a language and the more familiar you are with the letters, the more words you can spell.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 11:21 PM on July 1

Yes, but only through lots of practice and traini
ng.
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 5:31 AM on July 2

Absolutely. I have found that my ability to pick up a routine has gotten infinitely better as I've gotten older. I am not the most talented dancer, but I do enjoy it.
Also it helps if you not obsess over it and over think it, at least for me. I learn better as a series of moves in combination, rather than breaking it down really slowly.
posted by FergieBelle at 5:59 AM on July 2

Yes, it's acquired. It, and a number of other similar things use a process called chunking.

So after awhile, it stops being, "twist your foot like this, open your hips, etc.", it just becomes position 3, or something.
posted by fnerg at 6:40 AM on July 2

years of practice had given her an understanding of dance as variations on themes, so she could look at something and go, "Oh yeah, this is just like X, but instead of doing Y at that one point in the middle, you do Z, and your hands go like this..." And then the music kind of indicates where to hit your marks.
Nthing Cool Papa Bell, whose friend has it completely right. When I'm learning a totally new dance style I have to notice each and every movement so that I can learn and replicate it. As I get more experience with that style, the moves become more automatic, and I learn others by piggybacking on the ones I know.

For example, a tango basic would initially be learned as left foot forward, right foot forward, left foot forward, right foot to the side and slightly back, left foot in to right foot. A whole lot to remember and execute, and as you learn it your mind has to execute them individually. Now that I have practice with it, I simply think to myself "do a tango basic" and I do the rest through muscle memory. Variations on that move change my instruction list to "do a tango basic but angle your body at the end" rather than thinking about all the precise moves again.

This also extends to recognizing moves and variations for a particular piece of choreography. "Okay, looks like a tango basic...but what's he doing at the end? Alright, angle your body after the basic."

FuManchu's programming reference is also spot on. As you learn moves you write bash scripts for them, ready to call on demand. As you're learning a new piece, you're constantly using grep (possibly piped from head) on your move list to see if you can break down the dance to chunks you recognize. And maybe it's not a perfect diff but it's easier to just cp, cut and cat than to rewrite the entire script.
posted by ThatRandomGuy at 6:43 AM on July 2

The best comparison I can think of is it's a lot like playing music or memorizing a new song.
On an instrument, you learn all the notes that compose a song. In dance, you learn all the moves that make up and expression of a song.

In each case you weren't really familiar with the end result going into it but you did know the notes beforehand along with the general mechanics.
posted by zephyr_words at 6:45 AM on July 2

Imagine that I asked you to memorize a speech in another language. If you didn't know the language at all, you'd have to memorize a long string of what would sound to you like nonsense syllables. You could do it, but it would be extremely difficult. If, however, you knew the language the speech was written in, you'd understand the words and their meanings and be able to memorize it based on what it was about and how the grammar of the language works. Much easier.

If you know various dance steps and have experience with the ways in which dances are choreographed to fit the music, learning a new dance is substantially easier than if you're trying to remember, "OK, after that, my hand goes here and my left foot goes in front of my right foot, and then I turn to the left..."
posted by decathecting at 8:28 AM on July 2