How to learn choreography faster in one evening
Split the routine into blocks and drill one at a time instead of starting from the top on every attempt. Eight counts, slowed down, repeated, nothing new until that block holds.
Half an hour is enough for the first chunk of a chorus. New to learning from a video? Our guide on learning a dance at home covers the setup.
- Watch the video once without joining in, and find where the count lands back on one.
- Pick one eight-count, ideally from the chorus.
- Set the speed to 0.5x and dance it three times while you watch.
- Count out loud and give every move a name.
- Run it again with your eyes off the screen. Two clean runs in a row and you add the next eight.
Why replay short dance clips instead of the full choreography?
Because a full run-through mostly drills the opening twenty seconds. The bar where you keep losing it gets one attempt per run, which is the bar asking for repetitions.
Work it out. Ten minutes of run-throughs on a one minute routine gives your hardest eight counts about eight goes. Ten minutes on that section alone gives you dozens.
Going back to the top also trains the stop. Your body learns to bail in the same spot, exactly where you want to dance straight through.
How do I know when to move on to the next clip?
When you can dance the block twice in a row without watching, and not a run earlier. One clean go can be luck. Two in a row means it has moved from the screen into you.
During those two runs, watch yourself, not the dancer. The moment your eyes flick back to the video, the run does not count.
If the block falls apart the second you attach the next one, loop the two together. A transition is a move in its own right and wants the same repetitions as the blocks on either side.
Count out loud, then name every move
Counting out loud is the oldest tool in the studio and it works just as well at home. You hear yourself rushing before you see it, and the count carries you through the beat you do not know yet.
Names do the rest. Dancers label sections by what they see: the swing, the double clap, the bit where you drop. Eight counts turn into three words, and three words are easier to hold than eight moves.
- Round one: say the eight out loud without moving.
- Round two: clap the counts.
- Round three: say the names on the count while you dance.
- Say the list back with the music off, and the order is yours.
Mark the block instead of going full out every time
Marking means doing the dance small. A jump becomes a tap of the heel, a turn becomes a half turn on the spot, and the shape stays where it was.
Dancers mark in the wings and between run-throughs. At home it is how you get ten repetitions out of a block without going out of breath. One full out, two marked, then full out.
Then set the speed to 1.25x and mark along. At that tempo the wobbly transition shows itself immediately.
Setting the A to B loop and the speed in Djensur
Djensur puts the dancer on a stage beside you, with you cut out live from your own room. The cutout runs on your phone, so your live camera feed goes nowhere.
For a half-hour drill that changes one thing: the move and your correction sit in the same frame.
- Add the video you want to learn from. One dancer in frame, fifteen minutes at most.
- Pick one of the thirteen stages, and use the two sliders to put yourself and the dancer at the same size.
- Drop to 0.5x or 0.75x for a new block, and go back to 1x as soon as it runs.
- Put A at the start of your block and B at the end, and the dance jumps back to A by itself. It checks once a second, so leave your B a count late.
- Tap the strip on the floor to jump ten seconds back or forward.
- Every session records itself, and afterwards you keep the clip or drop it.
How do I remember a routine the next day?
Come back to it once more with a night in between. Every dancer knows the feeling: the block that wobbled all evening is simply there in the morning.
Keep it short. Ten minutes of saying yesterday's names out loud and running each block once holds the order.
Your own camera feed shows up mirrored, like a mirror on the wall, while the dancer stays as they were filmed. If your tutorial is already flipped, read our guide on mirrored dance videos.
A streak counts the days in a row you danced, and a session counts once you pass thirty seconds.