choreography

Choreography has interested me for some time now. I think the first time I realized how much I loved creating movement to music was my Senior year of high school when I choreographed my senior project to Dixie Chicks' "Top of the World." I loved this music for the last couple minutes of the song due to the sweet string stuff that goes on. Pretty cool music. Having that opportunity to choreograph to the music, pick costumes, and set the lighting myself and the watching the piece on stage was an incredible feeling and one that I decided I wanted to keep having. Thus, I decided I wanted to be a choreographer. I came here to school to be a dance major so that I can choreograph.

My sophomore year of college I was still performing with Ballet Utah, the company I trained with in high school (I did take my freshman year off from them). I asked for permission, and received it, to choreograph a piece for the gala performance in February. I worked with a really good guy friend of mine and together we created a piece about good, evil, and temptations in life. It was an amazing piece that I actually danced in. While I will never dance in a piece I choreograph again, it was a really cool piece and I had a lot of compliments about it after the show.

So I continued on in my quest of getting a degree in dance. Last year, I had the opportunity to put together a piece for Ballet Showcase's spring show; however, at the time I didn't have anything in mind, and there wasn't a piece of music that inspired me. Later on after our show we still had time until the end of the semester so for our choreographic workshop I worked on a piece that I set on two girls to Billy Joel's Lullaby (Goodnight, My Angel). It was a comfort zone piece, but was well received by my teachers and what not.

This year we were told we could put together a choreographic proposal that would be due in November for our March show. I was determined to get something into this show. So I searched and searched for the perfect piece of music. When suddenly, it hit me. During the summer I had been driving in the car with BKT, one of my awesome FHE brothers at the time, and we were listening to a CD of his when some sweet music came on that was happy, peppy, and overall perfect for dancing to. I told him that someday I wanted to choreograph to that music. So late in September, I called up the BKT and asked if I could come and listen to his music to find something awesome. 2 hours later I had my music selected, cut, and ready to go. I turned in my proposal, which was accepted and started rehearsal soon after our November show. Currently I have 2/3 of the music choreographed and set on the girls. I will be finishing the choreography in the next couple of days and teach it to them when we get back to school next week. I will then be showing it to our director the week or so after that to get the heads up or down on whether or not this piece will be in the spring show.

Overall, I just love the choreographic process. It's so refreshing to me to take a piece of music and mold steps to it and find the costumes and set the lighting. I love the feeling and I'm excited at the prospect of completing this project. I certainly will have at least one more project here at BYU, which will be my culminating senior choreographic project. I don't know what I am going to do for that yet, but I'm excited at the prospect of yet again finding a new piece of music and molding my ideas into it.