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| Thought I would add my favourite picture of our dance school on stage. |
1) Lines
The excessive use of long lines of people is a sure fire way to make me angry when watching a performance. Even smaller lines of say 4 people can make a perfectly good number look tired, especially when combined with the musical theatre 'walking towards the audience'. When I see it on stage, I ask how hard it would have been to make said line staggered, or add some variation to what is otherwise an extremely dull stage picture. (I'd hate to imagine my reaction if I was forced to watch Line Dancing!)
2) White Girl Dancing
Anyone with experience in dance schools will know exactly what I mean here. So many 'hip-hop' classes fail to recognise that the main element of the dance style, the swagger associated with it, cannot be achieved with the choreography they use in other styles. You think that the dancers from the streets put beautifully placed Pas de Bouree's in their dance battles? It's something that has always annoyed me, and will do while dance films like Step Up continue to plague cinemas.
3) Unison
I have to state that Unison can look incredible. Seeing 10 people acting as one on stage is impressive, but this hardly ever happens. Put 30 people on stage and it begins to look messy.It annoys me when I see choreographers doing nothing to add some contrast to the stage picture, something that could be achieved by taking out a few dancer, adding a floor pattern here or there, or just being creative from the off.
4) Needless Clapping
This goes for both Clapping on stage, and audience participation clapping (which is a far greater sin in my books). Telling people to just have fun and clap from side to side looks awful, no matter how it's done. Get the audience involved though, and it sounds terrible too, one thing I would never ask people to do if I was choreographer.
Not a long post, but one I've had on my mind while being involved in my University Dance Society show.
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