Learning Choreography: Are We Working Around the Skill Gap?

Theatre directors are remarkably good at working with the cast in front of them. They adapt. They divide and conquer. They recognize who can handle what. They simplify when something isn't working, feature the strengths of individual performers, adjust formations, change choreography, and somehow pull wildly different skill levels together into one cohesive production.

That's not a weakness in theatre education. It's one of its greatest strengths.

A cast may include trained dancers, strong singers who have barely danced, students who pick up choreography immediately, students who need to see it fifteen times, students who are afraid to look silly, and students who need movement taught differently in order for it to click. And the director's job is still the same: make the show work.

So they do.

But after talking with directors about the challenges they encounter when students are learning choreography, I started noticing something. We spend a lot of time talking about how to work around differences in movement ability.

I'm wondering if we also need to talk about how to close the gap.

Directors aren't complaining. They're solving problems.

Ask theatre directors what frustrates them about choreography, and many of them won't give you a long list of complaints. Instead, they'll tell you what they do about it.

If choreography is frustrating students, simplify it. If performers have different abilities, layer the choreography. If a student can't execute something, give them something they can execute successfully. If the cast includes students with different learning needs, find another way to teach it. Make the choreography accessible. Adjust. Keep moving.

That's what good directors do.

But underneath those solutions are some very real rehearsal challenges. Students ask so many questions that the choreographer struggles to get through the material. Students talk while choreography is being taught and then don't know what comes next. The same material has to be retaught at the next rehearsal. Some performers mark everything halfway and struggle to translate it into a full performance.

Others become self-conscious, giggle, hide, or shrink their movement because they're afraid of looking ridiculous. Some students can remember the steps but still look awkward performing them. Some simply don't have enough movement vocabulary yet to understand what the choreographer is asking their body to do.

Those aren't necessarily choreography problems. They may be signs of a movement skill gap.

Why Learning Choreography Isn't Just About Easier Steps.

This is where I think we need to make an important distinction. Accessible choreography matters. But accessible choreography and developing capable performers are not the same thing.

You can simplify a sequence, reduce the number of turns, change the locomotion, keep the strongest dancers in front, or create multiple versions of the same phrase. And sometimes, those are absolutely the right artistic choices.

But if a performer doesn't understand weight transfer, changing the steps doesn't teach weight transfer. If they don't know how to use the floor, simplifying the choreography doesn't teach them how to use the floor. If they struggle with coordination, rhythm, alignment, spatial awareness, or picking up movement, changing the choreography may help them succeed in this number without necessarily making the next number easier to learn.

And if they're afraid to commit physically, easier choreography can still look tentative.

That's why I don't think the answer is simply to give students harder choreography. It isn't. The answer is to give students opportunities to develop the skills that make choreography—easy or difficult—more manageable.

Rehearsal can't carry the entire burden of training.

This is also where I want to take some pressure off directors and choreographers. A production rehearsal has a job. You have blocking to finish, music to clean, characters to develop, sets, costumes, props, transitions, technical elements, schedules, parents, administrators, and approximately 4,000 other things demanding attention.

Your choreographer needs to choreograph. They shouldn't also have to squeeze years of dance training into rehearsal.

There simply isn't time.

And that creates a strange problem in educational theatre. We want students to grow, but because the production has to be successful, we often have to build around the skills they currently possess.

That makes perfect sense for the show. But where does the growth happen?

What if the training happened behind the scenes?

That's the question I've become increasingly interested in. What if directors didn't have to choose between accessible choreography and developing stronger movers? What if students could work on movement skills outside the limited rehearsal window?

Not because every theatre student needs to become a dancer. They don't. But every performer has a body, and that body is part of their instrument.

Students can learn how to shift their weight. They can improve coordination. They can build balance, strength and stamina. They can practice turns and locomotor patterns. They can develop a larger movement vocabulary and learn how to pick up choreography more efficiently.

They can practice committing to movement instead of shrinking when they feel uncomfortable. They can learn what "bigger," "stronger," "grounded," "sharp," or "connected" actually feels like physically.

Those skills don't require changing the show. They require training the performer.

Choreograph for the cast you have. Train for the cast you're building.

I don't want directors to stop adapting. Adaptation is good teaching. Accessibility matters. Meeting students where they are matters.

But meeting students where they are doesn't mean leaving them there.

There's a difference between saying, "This student can't do this, so I'll give them something else," and asking, "This isn't accessible to them yet. What skills would help them get closer?"

Sometimes the answer will still be to change the choreography. Sometimes the artistic choice really is the simpler one. Sometimes a student's individual needs mean a particular movement isn't appropriate for them at all. That's fine.

Growth doesn't require every student to perform identical choreography. It means we're intentionally expanding what each performer is capable of doing.

Because when we only work around skill gaps, we may create a successful production. When we also invest in closing those gaps, we build stronger performers for the next production.

Maybe this shouldn't be another job for the director.

In fact, I don't think it should be. Directors already have enough jobs.

This is exactly why I've become so interested in what happens between rehearsals. Could students have access to movement training that supports the work directors and choreographers are already doing? Could they practice foundational skills without using precious production time? Could a student who doesn't consider themselves "a dancer" spend thirty minutes developing coordination, learning a turn, practicing choreography, or building the physical confidence to go full-out?

Could we create a culture where movement training is simply part of becoming a more capable theatre performer?

That's the gap I want to help fill. Not by replacing the director. Not by telling choreographers how difficult their choreography should be. And definitely not by expecting every theatre student to suddenly become a technically trained dancer.

But by giving performers the tools to become more capable than they were yesterday.

Theatre directors are already extraordinarily good at creating something beautiful with the performers standing in front of them.

Imagine what becomes possible when those performers keep growing.

Don't just work around the skill gap. Help close it.