HOW TO CHOREOGRAPH A DANCE

hey everybody welcome to my youtube video if you don't already know who I am my name is Marcus al gato I live in North Hollywood where all the dance studios are and I live with about 20 to 30 other dancers which is why it's super loud right now if you can't hear them yeah but anyways let's get started so whether you are already a choreographer or just somebody that is looking for more tips this is how I choreograph you don't have to do it exactly like me but this is what I learned when I first started and this is kind of how I've been doing it so the first thing that I do is reflect on how I'm feeling whether it's on a specific event that just happened in my life like whether a sad event or a happy event or how I'm feeling just in general if I'm feeling lazy if I'm feeling more calm if I'm feeling more upbeat I figure that out first the second thing that I do is pick a song so I'm actually gonna be showing you how to choreograph with a song that I'm actually going to choreograph today and I'll post the video on Tuesday or maybe next week of the actual product of the choreography so the song that I'm gonna be choreographing to today is a popular song and that's the reason why I picked it cuz a lot of dancers especially I already know if the song is it's called slow down love and if you don't know what that song is I'll put the link on a card right here or something so you can click on it and let's do it real fast basically I'm just going to be walking you through on how I choreograph this song and again the reason why I chose this song is because I've been feeling more kind of lazy I guess a little bit more chill not so upbeat and that's kind of more my style I'm more of a contemporary hip-hop artist slash urban slash everything I don't know songs that I really like to choreograph to our artists that can really have their voices really low and really high so a couple artists that would example that is like hozier or James Vincent McMorrow but this song that I'm doing right now slow down love by Olivia the child isn't doesn't really example that but that's just something that to keep in mind the reason why I like to choreograph those types of songs is because they look really good on stage which is more or less my background because I come from like three four years of teaching at a studio where we went once or twice a year to a competition and spent the whole weekend there and yeah you know how competitions are but aside from the vocals I really like to have sounds that are not really common in music so any sort of sound that just is really unique I really enjoy that in a song because it really captures attention it's really fun to play with because it's not very common with your hearing so it's not gonna be really common with your body if that makes sense so yeah anyway step three is to just do what I'm not show you so here's an example of how I do it but I'm gonna do it again with slow down love so you can actually see while I'm doing it these are notes from a solo that I choreographed for myself last year I performed it at monster's dance competition in Vancouver but basically this is how it looks so what I do is I write down just the title all that this is the number of how many dances I've created I I keep them all in like a book like this this is my second one so that's number 88 I guess but anyways yeah I thought yeah I title it and then I write down kind of like the lyrics and how they sound so the arrow kind of shows like the fluctuation of his voice I guess and then I write X's for different things like this could be a hi-hat and then I'll hold of me I guess I was kind of explaining how they all are kind of like horizontal there's no really fluctuation there and then it kind of ends with a beat right there so that's basically the idea and I really like to choreograph to syllables when I'm choreographing with lyrics and then I really like to make sure that I hit those beats and really sit in those pockets so I'm gonna go ahead and analyze I think I'm starting at 15 seconds in slow down love and I'm gonna go to about 45 seconds so I'm gonna analyze all of that and then show you exactly what I did in the book and yes I do analyze the song before I choreograph so I'm not doing any sort of movement right now I'm just analyzing the song figuring out where the voices are in fluctuation in wise where the beats are what are the Rises where I want to really entertain what I really want to be subtle all that so I'm gonna do that right now in the book and then I'll show you and then I'm gonna show you exactly how I choreograph with my body but I would need to hey guys so I just finished analyzing the song okay so as you can see I went with the first eight just being whole counts when I say whole counts I just mean one two three four five six yeah the reason why I did that is because if you listen to the song I'm starting at fifteen seconds it's very definitive with those high hats where it goes cut cut cut cut yeah so I used those first eights and I went ahead and wrote down the lyrics with that just in case I wanted to incorporate the lyrics in the movement somehow we'll get to that when I start choreographing so when I'm choreographing I always like to pick what I hear really definitive in the song first because that's what the audience or people watching are gonna hear first so that's obviously going to be the most satisfying to see so if I went with like just the lyrics or just the background music with that first eight it wouldn't be as satisfying as hitting those cut cut cut you know what I mean because that's what the audience hears and that's what they're gonna want to see it's gonna be really plain if you think about it but it's gonna be really satisfying and then after you get that definitive sound out of the way it's gonna start to get boring so you want to switch quickly to something else and you want to make sure that you're dancing to different counts so with the second eight I'm gonna go ahead and go with the lyrics because I'm more of a lyrical dancer contemporary artist so I went with one because it says there it ends on eight saying there and then on when it kind of echoes and says there again and I'm gonna hold that for four counts sorry and then on four it says out there air air and I'll use these arrows to show that it's going up up up and then it fades out so that's the fluctuation of the voice that I was talking about and then with the third eight count I believe they are snares I can't remember right now for some reason but I just went with that sound because again it was really definitive because it's a new beat a new sound usually every two eight counts there's a new sound that comes in to the song if you don't already know that so I went ahead and listen very carefully to see what those counts were on because in case I want to teach this to somebody I need to know my count and so should you if you wanna choreograph you should definitely get comfortable with being able to count and know what your counts are so when you teach it you can tell your students like hey this is on two and/or on three or whatever or you're gonna hold three four because if you don't really tell them and you just go with the rhythm it's gonna be really hard for them at first if you're like in LA or something then it's it's easier to not teach with counts because everybody is used to the rhythm and can pick up that rhythm very well and it actually is easier sometimes so I mean it's kind of your call when it's really chopped to like this song I like to use counts that there was more lyrics I would like to just use the lyrics or the rhythm of the sound if that makes sense so again with that third eight count I went ahead and just found all those snares so it goes cut cut cut hole cut cut cut cut cut cut cut yeah if that makes sense so it goes 1 to N and then I put a 3 with the H because that means halt so there's nothing going on there and then it's in between so it goes 1 2 and hold and hold and 5 6 and hold and and hopefully that all makes sense if you're not very comfortable with music kind of use this as a guideline to get started and start analyzing your own music maybe that could be your first step before actually choreographing is just grabbing songs here and there that you like and just trying to analyze them and figure out where the sounds are and what they sound like because that's all this is and then after that I went ahead and jump back to the lyrics the reason why is because after this next eight count is when the bass really kicks in so I really want to bring the levels back down and really calm down whoever is watching because I really want that to settle in for that bass right there because that's when the beat really kicks in is on that one so again I'm on with the lyrics it just goes 1 4 5 6 7 and on 8 there was a weird kind of like sound that I enjoy so I wrote like a little like squiggly cuz that's kind of how it sounds it goes ooh and then there's a bass but I put that bass over here on one because it goes bass snare bass bass bass snare hold on that H right there again 8 is a hole so I put that H there and I wrote bees for bass and s for snare so that's basically all that happened I'll show you guys one more 8 count so after that first eight again I like to use what is really definitive which is that base and those snares because that's what they're gonna hear first so I really want to hit that boom on that one and then after that first eight I can start to play a little bit more so again I went ahead and stayed with that bass in the snare until that drop and then right here I use the background music I use the background music it goes 5 6 & 7 so what I mean with these arrows they're not pointing to the 6 this is separate and this is separate so I kind of showed that 5 is kind of swing this way and 6 is swinging back and then an 7 is more of like a down up kind of sound so it goes top cha ha ha and then the 8 is a build it's just a weird sound and it goes yeah this is just a build so I wrote like a bunch of little squigglies after the 8 hopefully this is all making sense to you guys that's basically how I did everything so as you're kind of analyzing the music you kind of want to think too about what is going to be entertaining there's a lot of stuff that you can analyze you can analyze everything and then just pick out what you want when you're choreographing but that kind of is a lot of unnecessary work so I kind of like to listen to the song a few times or what I'm going to be choreographing to and just kind of see what I want to happen if that makes sense one thing that is very important is to remember how you first felt when you first heard the song so the first time that you heard the song really remember or try to understand how you're feeling so whenever I hear a new song I really kind of pay attention to that so in case I want to choreograph it I can remember exactly what I heard the first time exactly how I felt the first time everything because it's gonna feel and sound a lot different the second time the third time the fourth time you get some more plane yeah and that's it that's another thing if you're gonna choreograph a song that's on like the radio chances are that people have already heard it so it's already gonna be less entertaining to somebody watching it which is why I like to pick music that is very under the radar I'm very not on the radio but with this song a lot of people have already heard it especially dancers so it's not gonna be as appealing because they're gonna know when that bass is coming they're gonna know when that snare is they're gonna know when that build is all of that but I'm just using this song because it's very basic it's very easy it's very slow and it's really easy to understand for you guys that are here that having choreographed yet I really wanted you guys to understand the beats and how to analyze a song before you choreograph that's how that's how I do it remember it's not about copying me this is just how I choreographed you can do exactly how I do it but I highly suggest not doing that because this is also part of the creativity process you want to figure out what it is that you need to do what you want to do to figure out what it is to create a good day for example one choreographer told me I can't remember his name right now I'm sorry but he says one thing that he used to do was google how other creators would find their creativity in history and just copy what they do so he found on the internet one time that one guy would actually hold a spoon in his hand while he was sleeping and once he fell asleep he would gradually you know let go of the spoon and he would make like a nice like ding sound on the floor so basically this was his idea of creativity or his his way of being creative he would fall asleep let the spoon hit the floor and he right when that woke him up he would write down the first thing that came to his mind whatever it was he would write it down and then just go back to sleep and then in the morning he would think about it and try to just use that to his creative process so I mean it's just about figuring out what it is to make the whole choreographing part more more real to you I guess because it's all it's all just creativity it's art nobody's art can be the same it never will be the same no matter how much you want to be like somebody else you will never beat them and that's the perfect way to fail because if you're gonna be like somebody else you're never gonna be successful because you can never be better than who the person is you does that make sense like for example nobody can ever be better than Michael Jackson because he's Michael Jackson a lot of people can interpret his movements in their own way but they're never going to be Michael Jackson nobody will ever be Michael Jackson period now that I said everything that I need to say hey I'm gonna start choreographing this and I'm gonna kind of have the camera on me so you kind of see how I'm thinking and I'll be talking while I'm showing if that makes sense I was late Dale hey so I completely lied to you guys I'm not gonna show you the reason why I'm not gonna show you actually what I was doing while I was choreographing was just because it's really it's really personal too I think the Creator so I don't really want to put out all my actual like body thoughts in the video because that's my personal movement my artistry but basically I'll show you what I did you just write down the movements that you were doing below the analyzation of the song you just want to write down whatever will help you remember the choreography and that's why I was skipping a line when I was analyzing the choreo and basically that's just where all the creativity comes in just how well you know your body how you want to express yourself everything and if you get frustrated with choreographing it's just not coming to you you just don't really know what to do next you don't really know where to start it's basically just broken down freestyle so if anything just freestyle to the song for maybe 10 seconds of where you want to start choreographing and pause the song remember what you were doing and start from there that's a good place to start but if you can I highly suggest just going straight from the notes no music whatsoever just using the notes reading what you've written down and analyzed and go off that like bass snare whatever the counts are just use that because you really want to pay attention to showing what the music is and not how its manipulating you I guess because our job as choreographers is to show the sound and entertain as best as we can so guys that basically wraps up the video if you have any other questions about choreography please drop it in the comments section below or message me on Instagram I'll put the tag right here just message me I'm really humble I'll message you back I promise it might not be within 5 minutes but I promise I will get back to you when I have the time and again if you are a newcomer to my video or my channel please subscribe please Ally and please watch my vlogs I promise they're entertaining I promise you there's nothing more entertaining than a bunch of dancers in a house in LA in Hollywood it's a great time all the time every day it's just fun laughter is it's just so much fun just please watch the vlogs enjoy it share with your friends all of that I will greatly appreciate it because these vlogs take a lot of time as everybody would say and I'm gonna say they just are very time consuming so that wraps up the video I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you were able to take away some tips or hopefully get started on choreographing and that's everything so please stay tuned to the next video I will see you guys next Saturday which is my vlog days posting days so I will see you guys then peace out goodnight spread love everything you know whatever peace out [Music]

Channel: Marques A. Salgado

Views: 88,544

Keywords: marques salgado, how, to, choreograph, dance, choreography, dance video, dancers, how to video

Id: 9DZF6ynISoA

Length: 17min 21sec (1041 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 20 2018