The shadow

Choreography is art of putting feelings into visuals.

Learning Choreography is about understanding the choreographer's feelings.

Dancing is about understanding your own feelings and its expression.

Feelings are like colors, global in recognition yet different in every individual's eyes. Therefore they are bound to have similiarities.

A step is just a step. They are restricted by the invisible rules of visual beauty. This then results in steps becoming what is known as "dance vocabulary". Steps/lines that seem to look wrong in jazz but nice in hip-hop, Or vice-versa to name an example. So we are then tied down partially to those rules when we want to express our feelings. Because even though feelings are so free of expression's boundaries, we need a standard language or norm to express them. And what good is expression when the majority cant feel it?

So thats how certain steps or lines are made. BUT the norms today might never be the norms tomorrow. If a step looks ugly or wrong, it is condemned. But if more than 70% changes their mind and accepts it, it becomes good.

So what do you think of when you learn choreography?
Are you just a shadow? A simple copy of its master?
Or are you something more? Something that lives in the music, the feel, the dance.

You should never copy the expression. Expression may have similiarities, but only you yourself know wether it is genuine or a copy. Dance with not just the "vocab" but dance with the feel. Your OWN feel.

A teacher can only teach you what he thought. Not what you are going to think.