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Tips, Research and
Excerises to help you develop your Choreographic talent!
Visionary
Choreographer
At about the same time as Captain Cook discovered Australia,
Jean Georges Noverre wrote his influential exposition, Letters
sur la Dance (1760).
Noverre, called the 'Shakespeare
of Dance', was a dancer and choreographer who worked to reform
ballet, believing that choreography should focus on the drama
of dance, emphasizing the plot. He freed dancers from the
tradition of wearing masks, enabling elements of mime to be
incorporated in the ballets.
Born in Paris, Jean Georges created
a style of choreography, which he called ballet d'action,
where the movement was born out of the plot. He obtained a
long-desired position as director of the Paris Opera in 1776
under the patronage of the French Queen Marie Antoinette.
A prolific choreographer, Noverre created more than a hundred
and fifty ballets before his death in 1810.
Jean Georges Noverre's birthday
is now observed as International Dance Day which is celebrated
across the world on April 29th.
Timely
Tips
It is so easy
when you first choreograph to just keep dancing and dancing
believing that if you should stop for a moment you will be
boring!
The experienced choreographer knows
the very opposite is the truth, if you don't stop you WILL
be boring! When music stops it's called a rest or a tacit.
These 'pauses' are essential to create interest, not only
in the music composition but also in the well crafted dance.
Similarly,
the commas and full stops that are used to punctuate sentences
in the written word can be replicated in choreography by the
insertion of pauses and tacits in the dancer's movement.
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