How Does a Choreographer Spend a Workday?

Choreographing

As the name suggests, a choreographer spends a large portion of his day organizing movement. Choreographers will most often create dances for stage performances, music videos, movies or dance companies. A few will choreograph fight scenes, crowd scenes and other incidents of mass movement in movies, plays and television. Some choreographers are given a piece of music and a few general ideas they then have to transform into movement; others will spend long periods of time listening to different pieces of music to find the perfect selection for a job and develop their vision from there. Some choreographers are able to envision the entire piece in their head, while others write down each step to remember later. Many choreographers do the majority of their choreographing during rehearsals, so they can see the movements as the they conceptualize them.

Directing

Most choreographers will be responsible for the direction of their choreography. This means that a choreographer will spend many a workday holding auditions, choosing costumes and teaching dancers the choreography she has arranged. Additionally, the choreographer will be responsible for ensuring that the performance space is appropriately prepared for the performance. This might include setting the volume of the music, surveying the stage design, attending to lighting concerns and directing curtain pulls. While this is not the concern of most choreographers who work for large dance companies (or in movies and television), it is often the responsibility of the average self-employed choreographer.

Networking

Unfortunately, there are very few full-time choreographers. Most work freelance on a job-to-job basis. For this reason, it is very important for a choreographer to network. A choreographer may spend a workday networking with ballet companies, dance studios, talent agents, television- and movie-production companies and other choreographers. This involves setting up casual meetings to discuss any potential projects the choreographer may be able to pick up. Often, a choreographer will already have a dance in mind to pitch to the people he knows in the industry. At other times, the work finds the choreographer. Either way, a choreographer must spend some time during the workday making calls to find more work.