The choreographic process: responding to a stimulus, generating and selecting movement material, structuring the work, and refining it through improvisation, rehearsal and editing into a complete solo or group dance.

What this dot point is asking

AQA wants you to choreograph a complete dance from a set stimulus for Component 1, so you must show you can move methodically from an idea to finished movement: interpret the stimulus, generate material through improvisation, select the strongest movement, structure it, and refine it through rehearsal and editing. In the Component 2 written exam you must also be able to explain this process in words, using the correct vocabulary, because questions ask you to describe how choreographers work, not just to do it.

Responding to a stimulus

A stimulus is the starting point that triggers ideas. AQA sets the stimulus for the Component 1 choreography task, and it may be auditory (a piece of music or sound), visual (an image, sculpture or photograph), kinaesthetic (a movement or gesture), tactile (a texture or object) or ideational (an idea, theme or concept). Your first job is to decide a choreographic intention, the message, mood or idea the dance will communicate, because every later decision should serve it. A vague intention such as "sadness" gives you little to work with; a specific one such as "the slow withdrawal of a person from those around them" tells you what dynamics, spacing and relationships the movement needs.

Generating and selecting material

You generate movement by improvising around the stimulus, exploring the four core elements of action (what the body does), space (level, direction, pathway, size), dynamics (the qualities of energy and time) and relationships (how dancers connect). Task-based improvisation is more productive than free improvisation: setting yourself a constraint, for example "travel low along a curved pathway using only the upper body", forces inventive material that you would not stumble on otherwise. You should record improvisations (notes, filming, simple notation) so promising material is not lost.

Not all improvised material is worth keeping. Selection is a deliberate, critical act: you keep the movement that best serves the intention and discard the rest, then shape the chosen material into clear motifs that can be developed. A common error is to keep everything because it took effort to make; an unedited dance reads as a string of phrases with no focus.

Structuring and refining

Selected motifs are arranged into a structure (for example narrative, binary, ternary, rondo or episodic form) so the dance has a logical shape with a beginning, development, climax and ending. The structure should suit the intention: a story-based stimulus often suits narrative or episodic form, while an idea that recurs and transforms might suit rondo or ternary form so the audience recognises its return.

The work is then refined through rehearsal: editing transitions so sections flow, sharpening dynamic contrasts so the climax stands out, fixing timing and counts, and checking that every moment still serves the intention. Refinement also covers the aural setting and staging, because the relationship between movement and sound, and the use of lighting, costume and space, all shape how the audience reads the work.