Ballet Choreography Task

Hello fellow dance educators! 

I thought I would share what I am currently working on in my ballet unit with my Dance 9 students. I was inspired to change up our usual ballet project, which was feeling stale and decided to create a collaborative ballet choreography piece to be featured in our June Showcase. I wanted to share the vision behind this piece and how I introduced a short choreography task to my students this week, hoping to inspire or spark something in your planning! 

After wrapping up our lessons on ballet history and watching the documentary A Ballerina’s Tale featuring Misty Copeland, we spent three classes focusing on ballet steps and technique. This set the stage for our collaborative neoclassical ballet piece. 

This piece is neoclassical in that it will be performed to modern music rather than classical music but will primarily feature classical ballet movements. Students will wear street clothes that resemble their everyday school attire: shorts, leggings, jeans, t-shirts, and hoodies, all in a coordinated color scheme. They will also wear sneakers, embracing the "sneaker ballet" style coined by Jerome Robbins and later popularized by Justin Peck. This neoclassical ballet piece is loosely inspired by the work of Justin Peck, one of my favorite choreographers. Here’s a great example of both sneaker ballet and neoclassical ballet choreographed by Justin Peck.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMTv_Y0Zrl4

Justin Peck's "In the Countenance of Kings" with music by Sufjan Stevens

Our ballet piece will be collaborative in that it will be created and choreographed by individual student choreographers, small groups, and myself. The small group sections were created through a choreography task assigned in class, asking them to collaboratively create a short section of choreography. To facilitate this, I allowed students to choose their own groups, as it was a brief choreography task. I then walked them through the following choreography task: 

Ballet Composition Task Document

Public View Link of Task Document

What I love about choreography tasks like this is that they level the playing field for all my students, whether they are highly trained studio dancers or have never done ballet before. In my experience, trained dancers often struggle with creating their own sequences because they are used to following a codified syllabus. On the other hand, students new to ballet draw on the history, videos, and steps we’ve covered in class, making ballet feel accessible to them. 

I am really excited about this piece coming together. I hope this choreography task inspires you in your own classes. If you use this task or create something inspired by it, please share or let me know if you have any questions at victoria.reid@fineartsata.ca.  

Keep shining!  

Victoria Reid