#76: Choreography Made Simple: How to Learn Dances Quickly

Do you ever feel like everyone around you picks up choreography faster than you? It’s frustrating, embarrassing, and can leave you spiraling with self-doubt. I know, because I’ve been there.

In today’s episode of Dance Colleges and Careers, we’re diving into how to pick up choreography faster—and it’s not about talent, it’s about strategy. From food and hydration, to self-talk, to finding patterns in the music, I’ll walk you through the practical tools that help dancers of any age learn choreography more quickly and confidently.

You’ll learn:

• Why fueling your body (food + water) is step one to focus.
• How positive self-talk can change your learning speed.
• The importance of spotting patterns in movement and music.
• Why muscle memory only works if you go full out.
• How to decode your teacher’s style into something your brain understands.
• The trick I use of “teaching myself” to lock it in.

If you’ve ever left a class feeling lost while everyone else gets it, this episode will help you stop beating yourself up and start learning choreography smarter.

👉 Want more personalized help? Inside The Fame Academy, I help dancers pinpoint their learning strengths and create systems for mastering choreography faster, without panic or stress. 

https://www.brittanynoltimier.com/fame

Transcript

Ep76_choreography retention

Brittany Noltimier (00:00)

Do you ever feel like everyone around you picks up choreography faster than you? It's embarrassing, frustrating.

It's like your brain can't keep up. Well, here's the fix.

Hello there and welcome back to Dance Colleges and Careers. I'm your host, Brittany Noltimier and this is where we talk about all things dance, colleges, and careers. Today, we are diving into how to pick up choreography faster. This is important for us no matter what age we are. And quite honestly, when we can't pick it up, it puts us in a downward spiral and it leaves us feeling like we're the only one in the room.

who's just not getting it.

So you guys, picking up choreography has never been easy for me. Yeah, it's kind of embarrassing to admit that.

but at my home studio, there were two who I can think of who were always better at memorizing the choreography than they Macy and DJ.

And while I might've been technically stronger than them, I've always felt that they were smarter than me in that way. knowing that I wasn't as good as them at picking up choreography, it really was holding me back because I always had that negative thought process in my head of, well, I'm just not as good at that.

So that was, even from a young age, something that I kept telling myself that I wasn't as good at that. And it held me back for years, forever. I still tell myself that when I'm picking up choreography or trying to learn. I'm here to tell you guys not to tell yourself such negative things, but it's always easier said than done, right?

So if you are struggling to pick up choreography, let's figure out some skills of what we can do to get better at it ASAP.

so the root of picking up choreography is understanding how you focus in the studio. How do you learn? What are you thinking about when the teacher is talking? When are you focused? When are you not focused?

When does the teacher give an exercise and you're thinking about what you're having for lunch later? Or when do they give an exercise and you're completely honed in?

I keep coming back to this, it always starts from the first thing we do. Locking in your focus from this first step, we step into the studio.

So triggering your highest level of focus from the moment you walk in.

Competitive athletes will absolutely say the same thing, right? It's not only physical, what we're doing, we have to be mentally prepared as well. So you need to make sure that you've done what you need to do to be mentally prepared, whether you're in an audition or a class or a workshop day, and what do you need to be at your best? Let's start with some of the simplest things. Have you eaten and have you had water?

A lot of times when we lose focus, all we need is a swing of water. does that ever happen to you? Yes, sometimes all we need is some stinking water.

I know when I grew up this was really idiotic of me, but I didn't want to eat before class. I would insist that it gave me a tummy ache, insist that I would do better in class if I didn't have food. Well, that was stupid. Uh-huh, that was my immature, immature personality who really didn't understand how food works.

Food is fuel for our bodies. And if we don't have food, we will be hungry, of course, but not only that, we will not have the strength that we need to get through our class. could be shakier, not focused, because food is fuel for our body. So treat your body kindly. Food, water.

especially if you're at like a full day of workshops, eat a good lunch, bring snacks. You know what, I don't mean eat like a huge lunch that's actually going to give you a tummy ache or a full lunch of Chick-fil-A. No, we need to eat things.

good for our body to give it fuel. Even though you're like, yeah, but I dance so much. I can afford these calories, but it's different.

It's as simple as that. If you're struggling to focus, let's figure out if you've had enough water and food. Okay. If you have, let's move on to step number two. How are you talking to yourself? Are you speaking to yourself kindly or are you tearing yourself down at every second? When we get into that mindset of, you can't do it. you look stupid. Everybody else around you gets it and you don't get it. Why are we not getting it?

And at the same time, while we've said those six sentences, the teacher has gone on and given more choreography. How are we supposed to pick up more choreography when we are still constantly telling ourselves all these negative and poor things about ourselves? Whether you believe it to be true or not, you can't keep talking to yourself in that way when you're trying to pick up choreography. It's distracting and it is not helpful.

This is the same thing as fake it till you make it. Even if you are not good at picking up choreography, you have to change that. You have to tell yourself that you are. You have to speak kindly. You have to say, you're smart. You're intelligent. You've got this. But not only that, you have to remind yourself how to focus, how to check back in to say, are we gazing out the door again? Or are we looking at the teacher? Are we looking at the teacher and starting to daze?

again or are we listening to what they're saying, hearing it, and wanting to do it with our body? Okay, so first, food and water. Fuel for your body to just do what it needs to do to be strong and centered. Two, how do you speak to yourself? Kindly take away the distracting mean terrible thoughts because that is not servicing you.

Okay, the next thing is to look for patterns. Look for patterns in the choreography. A lot of times it could be the same rhythm over and over. So it might be intricate movement,

Finding the patterns can help you start to find connections with what our body should be doing, with how our brain is connecting to it. where do we find repeats?

Find the patterns in the movement because nothing's ever random. Yeah, it's very rarely that your choreographer is just giving you random steps if they are kind of shame on them. But nothing is ever random. goes to the music and music is filled with patterns, whether that's rhythms or sound effects or just different emphasis to help the listener connect, create.

remember and memorize because as people, we're creatures of habit, we love repetition and that's why musicians give us that repetition. So what in our choreography repeats or follows along a similar pattern. Next I want you to listen to musical cues.

This can be trickier when you're not as familiar with the music, but especially if it's a song you're familiar with, you know the song, you know the accents. Dig into the rhythm of the music, what you already know to let the choreography, the steps, layer onto the music and compliment each other.

Because I promise you that's what your choreographer is doing. That's why we dance. That's why we dance to specific songs, because we put the steps specifically to the music, to the accents. That's why I meant it's barely ever random unless they had to make up just four counts of eight.

And if you can use the music to connect the dance steps, it'll help you remember what goes on a specific part of the music. Or if you get lost, you at least know, okay, well, when we say platter, we move into this shape and that goes into the next phrasing. So let the musical cues tell your brain what comes next.

then how are you learning it? Are you marking absolutely everything really small, not even doing the arms? Or how are you learning with the teacher?

dancing is muscle memory. So if you never really do your choreography full out until it actually matters, then it's gonna be really tricky to remember the choreography. So make sure wherever you are, get yourself some space so that you can do the choreography full out. And then when you do it again and again,

The repetition of doing it full out will help you remember the choreography. If you do it small like this, how are you supposed to connect that?

was your body supposed to know that this meant whatever that phrasing was supposed to be? It doesn't make any sense. learning movement full out will help you memorize it. I know that can't always be the case if we are in a very packed environment. Oh man, I was at this one audition where I swear there were 300 of us in one dance studio. Maybe it was only 100.

and they squished us like sardines in there. It really was like kick, kick down. But you've got to figure it out for your brain. especially if you're still trying to figure out how to pick up this choreography, do it full out. Do it full out because when you perform it, you'll be doing it full out. If you don't have the space to do it full out, your arms need to be full out at least. Arms first of all are always full out. We should never be doing this. Nobody in the history of any dancing.

place has ever said, mark your arms. Nobody's ever said that. Yeah, you always should be doing your arms. The footwork is just sometimes what we might need to make smaller or like high battements Yeah, it's very rude to kick your leg up in somebody else's face when we don't have the space for that.

the more you physically do, the more your muscle memory is going to slide in and help you remember it. Now, that is muscle memory. Now our brains. So something that worked for me is I've always been a teacher, okay? My mom has owned a studio for 47 years. I started

assisting her at a very young age. started teaching at a very young age and ⁓ I'm very confident and comfortable teaching a classroom. I found that when I'd be in an audition and somebody would ask me like, hey, what count is this on? And at that time, I probably had no idea until they would ask me and then I would have to step up and teach them. Then I would figure it out and say it's on seven. And then I would never forget it. When I...

put myself into the teacher mode, into an elevated position rather than just dancer, could remember the choreography. So after I started realizing that, and call me crazy, but that's how I speak to myself. I speak in my brain, because you can't talk out loud while you're learning choreography, like I'm teaching myself, like I'm the teacher, like I'm stepping into the teacher's role rather than just

listening and following because then I wouldn't use my brain actively. I would just follow like a puppet and that didn't work for me. So as soon as I figured out I have to step into the teacher role, auditions, remembering choreography got so much easier for me and I would recognize any time that I didn't have maybe enough time to be able to flip it, to be able to ask myself these important questions or if I didn't have the confidence, if I didn't shift into that mode, I

wouldn't do as good of a job. So that is just one little trick I like to use because I'm super confident in my teaching shoes.

The other thing that really helps me is being able to look at the big picture.

Sometimes when we're learning choreography, we think one count, one count, one count, and it almost gets a little like segmented.

So if you can't see the overall picture or the overall musicality or the reason why, just this flow from start to finish, I think it can be harder to memorize the choreography. so when you're learning it and we break up into groups, that is the best time to watch somebody and not watch every single individual step, but watch it as a whole routine. Watch it as a performance, not just.

step, kick, step, hand, da da da. But being able to put it all together and seeing that overall picture.

And finally, the last thing that really helps me is counts. I'm a big counter. So if you're not, if you are better with accents or if you're better with words on the music, use what your brain is best at. So if the teacher is teaching to the words, I myself, like decode it into what the counts are. And I'm not raising my hand saying, what count is this on? I don't mean to do that.

They've already given you the timing. They've given you exactly what they want. Don't ask unnecessary annoying questions to waste people's time. That is homework that I have to do in my brain to make it make sense for me. I've never been good at lyrics with music. Ask my best friend Karah. I mean, there's so many lyrics. just sing wrongly and it is fine. But timing and musicality, I've got.

that is another thing that you have to dive deep. How do you study? How do you learn? What do you hear in the music that makes you remember? I like counts. If you like words, go with the words. But you have to decode.

how the teacher is teaching. heard this from many people and then like it ends with complaints. like, I just don't like whining. Okay, I just don't like complaining and whining. So when people especially come out of a tap class and like, I just couldn't get any of it. They didn't give me any counts. It was just like scat-a-da-da-da-da-da and rhythms. And I just can't learn like that. Well.

People learn in different ways and you have to decipher what the teacher's doing so that it makes sense to you rather than shutting down and saying, I don't get this teacher. I'm not taking it in another classroom now. Yeah. So if they're giving you rhythms and they're going, ba-bitty-daddy-daddy-ba-ka-ka, one, two, and three, and four, and five, six, seven, I don't know, give it counts. Give it something that makes sense to you. You know what? Hip hop is not my thing.

So when I would do hip hop auditions, I would tell myself it's sassy jazz. When they do step and they go like step and step out, if the footwork is literally step, pas de bourree, that's what I say in my brain, even though they're saying different words, but pas de bourree.

is very easy for me to understand. Backside front. Yeah, and that's very common in like hip hop or even choreography if they say step, step, step. well, we're stepping backside and front over here. That's a pas de bourrée. That's easier for me to connect those three steps together because I'm a technician. I love technique and vocab. So that's what I'm going to gravitate towards.

So time to ask yourself some questions. How do you learn? Where do you thrive? What are you best at? And you need to use your strengths to talk kindly to yourself and change how you're hearing what the teacher is giving you. You need to figure out how to take what they give and decipher what that means for your body and for your brain.

because there is nothing more frustrating than leaving a class and just not getting the combination when a majority of not getting it is just because of what our brain was doing and how we weren't able to control our level of focus.

know this is pretty complicated to figure out on your own.

this is something we teach inside the Fame Academy a lot of times it's hard to evaluate ourselves. so as your coach, as your guide, I help you pinpoint where your strengths are at

to help dancers like you pick up systems to learn choreography more quickly and confidently.

No more panic and stress to make you feel dumb in the dance studio because you're not. And that's not right. And it stinks to feel that way. So feel free to check out the Fame Academy and I will help you pinpoint where your unique strengths are.

so you can really change your struggles with retention.

Thank you so much for being here on Dance Colleges and Careers. I absolutely love getting to chat with you and help you along this dance journey. If you could do me a favor, if you know somebody who could benefit from this, whether that's a fellow dancer, dance mom, a studio owner,

to share this episode with them.

I'm always here cheering you on. So until next time, be brave, tell your story and own the stage.