Choreography personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

The first piece I ever made was three minutes long and had eleven people in it, which I now know was a mistake. I had asked friends from my college dance class to stand in a line and fall out of it one by one, and I could not work out why it looked so flat. Watching the recording afterwards, I realised I had only thought about the shape from the front, as though the audience were a single eye. Rebuilding it for four dancers, with two of them travelling upstage, taught me more than any single class had. That gap between the idea in my head and what an audience actually receives is what I want to spend three years learning to close. Choreography interests me because it is a form of thinking rather than only a form of feeling. When I read Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit, what stayed with me was not the encouragement but the insistence on routine and on keeping records of everything, including failures. I have since kept a notebook of tasks and constraints: move without using the floor, repeat a phrase until it changes, respond only to the person behind you. Constraints produce more material for me than waiting for inspiration ever has. I am drawn to contemporary and street forms and to the awkward, interesting place where they meet, since my own training sits across both and I do not want to pretend otherwise. What I lack is breadth. I have not worked with live musicians, in site-specific spaces, or with dancers whose training differs sharply from mine, and I have never had my work seriously challenged by people who make work themselves. A degree offers rehearsal time, technique that keeps my body reliable, and the critical vocabulary to explain choices rather than defend them by instinct. I want to leave able to make work that holds an audience's attention for longer than three minutes.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

A level Dance has been the centre of my studies. The choreography component forced me to justify structural decisions in writing, which was uncomfortable at first because I was used to saying that something simply felt right. Studying set works and analysing how motif is developed rather than merely repeated changed how I build phrases; I now tend to strip an idea back and find three variations before adding anything new. Writing about professional repertoire also showed me how much meaning sits in staging and lighting, elements I had previously treated as decoration applied at the end. English Literature has been more useful to my dance-making than I expected. Working closely on poetry taught me to read for rhythm and for the pressure created by line endings, and I have borrowed that idea of the deliberate break directly into movement, cutting a phrase off mid-gesture instead of letting it resolve. Essay writing has also made me quicker at building an argument from evidence, which is the skill I draw on when writing rationales for my own pieces. Geography contributes something less obvious. A coursework investigation into how a local high street is used at different times of day involved mapping pedestrian routes and counting where people stopped. Thinking about how bodies move through space because of what is around them, rather than by free choice, has fed into my interest in how audiences read spatial patterns on stage. Alongside college, I attend weekly contemporary and hip hop classes at a community studio and have taken part in two short weekend workshops in improvisation and floorwork. I read around the subject independently, including Siobhan Davies interviews and material on dance and disability that has made me question assumptions about what trained movement looks like.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

For the past two years I have helped lead the warm-up and cool-down for a junior class of eight to eleven year olds at my studio, under the teacher's supervision. I plan a ten minute sequence each week and have learned to give one instruction at a time and to demonstrate less than I used to, because the children copy my habits rather than understanding the task. When I set them a short game of making a shape and passing it on, I saw them invent transitions I would not have thought of. Watching untrained dancers solve movement problems has made me more willing to set open tasks with the peers I work with. At college I have made two pieces for our performance evenings, including a duet built from the gesture of someone repeatedly checking their pockets. Rehearsing it involved negotiating timetables, sending reminders and reworking a section when one dancer picked up an ankle injury, which taught me to design material that can survive a substitution. I also help with costumes for my sister's amateur theatre group, altering hired garments and sewing simple pieces. Kneeling behind a curtain fixing a hem three minutes before a cue gave me a practical respect for everyone who makes a performance happen, and I have become careful to ask whether a costume idea will actually allow a dancer to lift an arm above shoulder height. My Saturday job at a garden centre involves serving customers, moving stock and answering the same questions patiently many times over. It has given me stamina and the habit of turning up reliably in poor weather, and I have become noticeably better at reading when someone needs help and when they want to be left alone, which is useful in a rehearsal room. Outside all this I swim twice a week, partly to keep my shoulders strong and partly because it is the one hour where I am not counting anything. I am ready for full days of practical work and for the discipline of making work to a deadline rather than only when I feel prepared.

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