How do you critically appreciate and reflect on your own performance and choreography?
Critical appreciation of own work: reflecting on and evaluating your own performance and choreography, identifying strengths and areas for improvement and justifying choices against the choreographic intention.
How AQA A-Level Dance expects you to critically appreciate your own performance and choreography: reflecting on choices, evaluating strengths and weaknesses, and justifying decisions against the choreographic intention and your skills development.
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What this dot point is asking
AQA expects you to be able to critically appreciate your own work: to reflect on your performance and choreography, evaluate what worked and what did not, and justify your choices against the choreographic intention. This is reflective, evaluative writing, not just a description of what you did. The same analytical vocabulary you use on professional works applies to your own, but here you also have insider knowledge of the process behind the product.
Reflecting on your own work
You apply the same analytical framework you use for professional works (movement through action, dynamics, space and relationships; the dancers; the physical and aural setting) but turn it on your own choices, supported by specific examples from your solo, quartet or choreography. The advantage you have is access to the process: you know why you made each decision, what you tried and rejected, and how rehearsal changed the work, so your evaluation can explain causes, not just outcomes.
Evaluating and justifying
Reflect on both process (how you developed material, rehearsed and refined) and product (how well the finished work and your performance communicated the intention). A balanced reflection avoids two extremes: uncritical praise, which shows no insight, and pure self-criticism, which fails to recognise what genuinely worked. Honest, specific judgement backed by examples is what scores. The advantage of evaluating your own work is that you know the reasoning behind every choice, so you can explain not just what happened but why, and what you would change to communicate the intention more clearly next time.
Exam-style practice questions
Practice questions written in the style of AQA exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.
AQA 20186 marksExplain how you would justify two choreographic or performance choices in your own work by reference to your choreographic intention.Show worked answer →
A 6-mark "explain" rewards specific choices, each linked clearly to the intention with reasoning.
Choice one. Name a decision, for example using canon in a group section. Justify: the staggered entries created a sense of an idea spreading among the dancers, serving an intention about contagious panic.
Choice two. Name a second decision, for example sharpening the dynamics of the climax. Justify: the percussive quality made the high point read as a sudden break, communicating the moment of crisis in the intention.
Markers reward named, specific choices (not "I made it good"), an explicit link to the choreographic intention, and a concrete reason the choice served it, rather than a recount of what was done.
AQA 20218 marksDiscuss how reflecting on both the process and the product of your own work helps you evaluate it critically, with examples.Show worked answer →
An 8-mark "discuss" wants both process and product weighed, with concrete examples and honest evaluation.
- Process
- Reflect on how material was developed and refined: for example improvising widely then cutting weak material strengthened focus, but a late start on the ending left it under-rehearsed. Process reflection shows why the product turned out as it did.
- Product
- Reflect on the finished work and performance: for example the climax communicated clearly but a transition was untidy and broke the spatial relationship.
- Why both
- Product reflection identifies what worked; process reflection explains why and what to change next time. Strong answers connect the two (an under-rehearsed process produced an untidy product) and propose specific improvements, judging the work against the intention rather than offering vague praise.
Related dot points
- Analysing and interpreting dance: describing the constituent features (movement, dancers, physical setting, aural setting) and interpreting how they combine to create meaning and communicate the choreographic intention.
How AQA A-Level Dance Component 2 expects you to analyse the constituent features of a dance (movement, dancers, physical setting, aural setting) and interpret how they combine to make meaning and communicate the choreographic intention.
- Evaluating professional works: making and justifying critical judgements about professional choreography and performance, set in their cultural, historical and choreographic context, supported by specific evidence.
How AQA A-Level Dance Component 2 expects you to evaluate professional works: making justified critical judgements about choreography and performance, placing works in their cultural and historical context, and supporting judgements with specific evidence.
- 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.
How AQA A-Level Dance expects you to work through the choreographic process: interpreting a stimulus, improvising and generating material, selecting and structuring it, and refining the work into a coherent solo or group dance for Component 1.
- Technical skills and safe practice: posture, alignment, balance, coordination, control, flexibility, mobility, strength and stamina, and the warm-up, cool-down, hydration and floor-awareness habits that keep a dancer safe.
How AQA A-Level Dance expects you to demonstrate technical skills (posture, alignment, balance, control, flexibility, strength, stamina) and safe practice (warm-up, cool-down, hydration, correct alignment) so performance is accurate and injury-free in Component 1.
- Conditioning for dance: building strength, flexibility, mobility, stamina and core stability through targeted training, with appropriate nutrition, hydration, rest and recovery to support safe, sustained performance.
How AQA A-Level Dance expects you to condition the body for performance: developing strength, flexibility, mobility, stamina and core stability through targeted training, supported by nutrition, hydration, rest and recovery for safe, sustained dancing.
Sources & how we know this
- AQA A-level Dance (7237) specification — AQA (2016)