The Dance Routine Corner
Learning to dance? This site will help you with advice on learning dance routines and new choreographies.
With you on your journey to becoming a great dancer.
Help!
Common problems and topics covered when it comes to learning a dance routine, new steps and performing.
How Come Some Dancers Freestyle During A Dance Routine?
You may well have seen dancers freestyling during a dance routine and wondered why. After all aren't dance routines meant to be danced together?
Yes they are but there may be several reasons why dancers may be freestyling.
The most likely reason is that a freestyle section is built into the routines. Even though routines are thought out beforehand and are planned steps there may be some counts of freestyle within a routine.
So the choreographer may have planned for there to be 4 counts of freestyle within a routine. Of course when you ask the dancers to freestyle they will all do different things and will not look the same.
The dancers may have all been dancing together previously, so this can be a good way to change the poses. It can also serve to break the rhythm before going into another routine.
Another reason there may be dancers freestyling is the choreographer wants 2 things going on at the same time.
So perhaps they want most of the dancers doing a simple routine while getting some of their best freestylers to improvise and do their own thing.
This gives the individuals to showcase their talents and is useful if there are very talented freestylers in the group's ranks.
The other reason a dancer may be freestyling is purely because...they have forgotten the routine! It does happen and when they forget something rather than stop completely and ruin the whole formation or piece, they'll freestyle and try to make it look like nothing has happened!
Stopping completely would draw more attention to itself so it's better if a dancer makes a mistake for them to just freestyle a bit and then carry on with the other dancers when they know where they are again.
So there you have it - the reasons there might be freestylers in a routine. Some of them planned, some of them unplanned!