You might have come across Brinn Nicole’s amazing beginner choreography videos like the one featured today and thought “The dancers look amazing, but how am I supposed to learn how to do it on my own?”. It can be intimidating when you see the choreography performed so beautifully by so many people, but it is entirely possible to learn it yourself just from watching the video. You just need to know how to approach it.

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How to learn choreography from a video

Watch first before attempting

Before diving in and trying to emulate the dancers, sit back, relax and watch the entire routine a few times first. This way, you will get a feel for the overall flow of the performance and how it should be performed. In fact recently we wrote about an experiment performed by psychologists that proved that sometimes you can actually learn to dance just by watching, so follow the link to learn more.

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Slow it down and chunk it up

Of course it seems like an impossible task to pick up the choreography when you are watching the entire routine at full speed because it pretty much is (unless you’re a dance genius!). So the answer is to not try to do it like that. Instead, you should break the choreography down into chunks or phrases. These will only last a few seconds at a time and you should practice and practice the chunk until you can perform it perfectly before moving on to the next.

You also don’t need to learn it at full speed. Slow the video down so that you can catch each move in each chunk and follow it exactly. Learn the chunk slow first, then sped up, then move on to the next chunk slow, then sped up. And so on, until you have learned each part of the routine in turn.

Take the training wheels off

So now you have perfected dancing to the video. What next? If you want to be able to perform the routine to the song in any setting other than in front of your TV, computer, or phone, you are going to have to turn the video off at some point. This should be done in stages as it is surprisingly easy to forget what comes next, even if you’re confident in your performance while watching. Eventually, with some setbacks, you should be able to perform the routine without the video entirely.

Get the mirror out

Now it is time to drill down and perfect your performance. And to do this, it is a very good idea to dance in front of a mirror. Yes, this can feel embarrassing and awkward at first but there is a reason why every dance studio has a wall of mirrors. We can never be 100% sure of exactly what all of our limbs are doing without being able to see them.

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