Six Ways to Add Variety to Guard Choreography

It is SO much fun to teach color guard! One of the best parts of the job is creating choreography that fits the music, the skills of the program, and the time needs of the season. 

Each season has its own time constraints that can affect your choreo plans- the length of a piece, the amount of time until performing, and how much regular rehearsal time you have. 

There will always be times where you need to choreograph for a group and for one reason or another, they can’t be split by skill level. Maybe your drill keeps the entire line together, it’s a pep assembly, or you will perform in a block for every show! 

Even with all those factors (and more!) to consider, you also need to add variety to your choreography. Spinning in unison for an entire piece can be boring to look at, no matter how cool the choreography is. Let’s look at why we add variety to the structure or form of our work. 

Reasons to incorporate variety:

1. Variety adds visual textures– changing up facings or the who-moves-when of the work changes the texture from unison to something else. 
2. Use up more time– A/B work, ripples, and other strategies can extend one piece of choreography further. This is great when you know you’ll be short on rehearsal/teaching/cleaning time. 
3. Allows for differentiation for skill sets- Sometimes you can’t separate your students by skill, so use some variety tools to add more complex skills. 
4. Easy to learn– Students have a hard time memorizing when everything is endless unison.
   When choreography gets broken up by moments of structural variety, it’s easier to chunk pieces together! Strategies like A/B work cut down the total number of counts to memorize. 
5. Visual spiciness- Choreography is just more fun to watch, teach, and clean when it’s interesting and complex!  

I’ve got structural variety on my mind because it plays a huge role in my choreography this season. This year the group I work with has 13 students, minimal rehearsal time, and a very wide range in skill level. I want to keep the more advanced students engaged and learning without the less experienced students feeling overwhelmed by skills they aren’t ready for yet.

These suggestions are different ways you can add moments of variety and/or leveling without having two different sets of choreography to teach and clean.

Here are the 6 strategies YOU can use while writing

1. Simple A/B work
   
   One strategy I’m using this year is having phrases (about 16-32 counts) where the group is temporarily split. The A group performs a phrase, then the B group performs that same phrase. In the simple version, the group not spinning the main phrase will hold a pose while the other group spins.  
   
   This strategy can stretch choreography over a longer length of time (for less cleaning) and add a new texture visually for the viewers. 

2. Fancy A/B work 
   
   This strategy uses the same concept as the simple A/B work, but adds a little more excitement to the party. In this version, the group not spinning the main phrase has an alternate phrase to spin. This can be choreography with a lot of contrast to the main phrase, or it can be simple motions/bodywork to avoid standing still. 
   
3. Back/Front Facings
   
   One of the easiest ways to incorporate variety is having students perform the same phrase, but changing the facings so the groups are facing each other. This staging strategy doesn’t involve much extra cleaning time. 
   
4. Ripples
   
   Ripples are a great way to change the energy in an exciting way without it adding oodles of time to teach or clean. 
   
5. Toss variations
   
   This is a blend of the A/B concept that allows you to differentiate by skill. Splitting the group and giving different levels of tosses to each group so each group can be challenged.
   
   For example, one group tosses a basic flat toss on count 5 and the other group tosses a one-handed 45 on count 7, then everyone spins together in the following 8. 
    
6. Variety of numbers/solos/add-ons 
   
   Even with a small group, you can use groupings of students and add-ons to create variety without adding much extra to your teaching and cleaning time. Instead of teaching the add-on student-by-student, teach everyone the entire phrase. 
   After you teach it to everyone, you can group students and say “Students 1-4, you do the first 8 counts, Students 5-8 add-in for counts 9-16, then everyone else joins in for the last sixteen counts.” 
   Setting this up strategically can also let you put more advanced students/skills towards the beginning and make it simpler as the phrase adds people.
   
   See how you can vary *who* is spinning to add some zest to your choreography. 

These are just a few ways you can build variety into your choreography!

In a future blog post, I’ll be sharing my checklist of tools I use to make sure my choreography itself is exciting through the 5 main choreographic elements. 

Please join in the conversation and share the strategies you use to build variety into the structure of your work!