The 4 Dance Components

THE DANCE ELEMENTS
These are five tools to help you make Dance, learn Dance, teach Dance and talk about Dance.

• BODY AWARENESS: can be broken down in to three sections;
  -body parts
  -body shapes
  -body base

• TIME:  is the varied pace and accents of your movement.

• ENERGY:  is the quality and dynamics of your movement. You can think of it as the 'intensity'. 

• SPACE:  is how you move in and through the space. 

• RELATIONSHIPS: the connections between yourself, others, the space and what is in the space.

THE CHOREOGRAPHIC DEVICES
These are tools to manipulate EXISITING movement, in order to create 'new' material. Some common ones are:

• AUGMENTATION: making a movement bigger in time and space.

• CANON: movement repeated by each dancer.

• MOTIF: movement or gesture that can be elaborated many different ways.

• REPETITION: repeating a movement. 

• EMBELLISHMENT: adding detail to a movement. 

• FRAGMENTATION: breaking movement in to seperate parts, then mixing up the order. 

THE CHOREOGRAPHIC STRUCTURES
These are ways of organising movement to give it a 'form' (the same idea as how you would format an essay). Some common ones are:

• ACCUMULATION: successively building on e.g. A, AB, ABC, ABCD.

• CHANCE: a random structure. This structure is often created using the 'Dice' method by Merce Cunningham.

• NARRATIVE: a storyline.

• RONDO: recurring, contrasting sections e.g. ABACADA

TECHNOLOGIES
These are the design aspects of the dance. They are applied last once the work is being performed/on stage. They bring the work to life. The technology designs always link to the stimulus and intention of the dance, and there is often heavy use of symbolism. 

• MUSIC: referred to as the 'aural' design. Can be live, composed, soundscape, instrumental, voice and effects.

• LIGHTING: The use of light to shape mood, focus attention, and highlight movement on stage.

• COSTUMES: clothing designed to enhance character, theme, or movement in a dance performance.

• PROPS/SET: physical elements that create environment or context and interact with dancers.