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Dancing to Express Yourself

Updated: Jan 26, 2021

Have you ever created a dance routine? It may not have been a structured one, but I think most of us have danced alone in our rooms at least once. Dancing can be a fun way to express yourself and your emotions! In this activity, you’ll create a dance routine that symbolizes something you are trying to say. Then, you will write a short explanation of what you were trying to tell the audience with the dance.

Steps:

1. Decide what emotion(s) you want to convey with your dance. Choose one or more of the following emotions:


a. Friendship

b. Grief

c. Heartbreak

d. Anger

e. Joy

f. Rebellion

g. Confusion

h. Fear

i. Empowerment

j. Love


2. Then, find a personal reason you are feeling that emotion. For example, you might feel LOVE for your pet. Maybe you are feeling ANGER about a person who wronged you in some way.

3. Find a song that matches the mood of your topic, either with tempo or with lyrics. A slow song might be better suited for a sad theme like grief, and an upbeat song might work better for joy.

4. Now, you will create a dance routine!

5. Think about the types of movement you want to use in your routine. Some dance steps will be better suited for different emotions. The dance steps for a routine about love might include more flowy or gentle motions, while dance steps for a routine based on anger or rebellion might be more intense.

6. To come up with steps, you can either try them out while dancing to the song or draw your ideas out on paper.

7. Once you have an idea of the main steps you want to use in your routine, you can fill in the blanks.

8. Make sure to draw or write your steps out on paper so you don’t forget them!

9. Practice and memorize your routine.

10. Finally, perform the routine for family or friends. If you’d like, you could even upload a video of your dance to YouTube.

11. Answer the following questions about your dance routine:


a. Which emotion(s) did you pick?

b. What was your topic?

c. Why was this topic important to you?

d. Why did you choose the song that you chose?

e. How did you try to convey the emotions you chose through dance steps?

Resources:

More on how to choreograph your own dance routine:

Here are some examples of people putting emotion into their dance to convey meaning. Not all of these are dance, but you’ll find there’s a lot of the same motions that are in dance in other sports!

Slow Dancing in the Dark (Ice Skating): https://youtu.be/PvHcQ0eix_I

Katelyn Ohashi (Gymnastics): https://youtu.be/4ic7RNS4Dfo


By Lauren Clevenger

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