AT THE NATIONAL BALLET SCHOOL of Canada, a group of 9 to 14-year-olds take turns presenting their choreography to an informal audience of parents, other students, and teachers. The children, however tentative, seem to take joy in participating in the creative process using a movement vocabulary they love. They are part of the school's Professional Ballet/Academic Program that integrates classical ballet training with an academic education for students in grades 6 through 12. 

But how many of these young dancers will become professional dance makers? Is creating choreography an ability that can be taught? Can the requisite skills be transferred, like following a recipe in cooking? Or learning a formula in algebra? DANCE MAGAZINE posed these questions to school directors, composition teachers, choreographers, and artistic directors. The responses reveal that the real question is not whether we should nurture the ability of a talented individual; but instead, what is the best platform for an emerging choreographer to work, risk, fail, succeed, and come back again a little more confident? 

NBS artistic director Mavis Staines believes the teaching of choreography should begin at a young age. "If young people aren't encouraged to be involved in the process beginning when they are pre-pubescent," she says, "they will be too shy after adolescence to imagine they might have a voice as a choreographer." 

GEORGE BALANCHINE, on the other hand, thought choreography could not be taught at all. When he said to the young Peter Martins, "I can't teach you," Martins says he thought to himself, "If he can't, who can?" Balanchine's instruction to Martins was to watch and "see what you like and what you don't like, and what you like you'll absorb and use your own way, and what you don't like you'll discard." Now, as New York City Ballet ballet master in chief, Martins has adopted this philosophy of learning by watching with the student choreographic workshop at the School of American Ballet. And it was precisely for this reason that the New York City Ballet set up the New York Ghoreographic Institute, in which more experienced choreographers are chosen to work with the company or SAB students for three weeks to produce a dance. Choreographers Adam Hougland, formerly with Toronto Dance Theater and the Limon Company; Jessica Lang, who danced withTwyla Tharp; and NYGB principal dancer Albert Evans have all participated. 

"We're dealing with sophisticated people here who have watched and performed in many ballets," says Institute director Richard Tanner. "We let them try out their own ideas." 

In both the SAB Workshop and the Institute there is no criticism, no feedback, no public performance, and no press. In this way the fledgling choreographer has the safety of a place free from the critical eye of an outside audience. 

LOIS WELK, on the other hand, thinks a critical eye is essential. As artistic director of The Yard, an artists' colony on Martha's Vineyard that has nurtured many choreographers, including David Dorfman and Neta Pulvermacher, she advocates for criticism and reworking. She believes that a good composition teacher can suggest new ways of stimulating the artist's process. "It belittles choreography to say it can't be taught," she says. She sees the summer choreography residencies of The Yard as a laboratory. "I like to tell the choreographers that the performance of their work at the end of the session is the beginning." 

Lawrence Rhodes, director of the Juilliard School's Dance Division, draws a parallel between the teaching of choreography and the teaching of dance. You can teach the basic skills--the vocabulary, the movement, and the steps--but coming out a pure and clear dancer is not a guarantee. "Skills can be learned but a gift is still a gift," he says. Juilliard, whose graduates include Susan Marshall and Robert Battle, requires composition classes of first-year students. 

BUT SUZANNE CALLAHAN, director of the National College Choreography Initiative, a project of Dance/USA, questions whether college-level composition classes really work. "You have students who are trying to emulate what they learn to get an A," she says. Her program places choreographers like Jawole Willa lo Zollar in college dance departments like Towson University in Maryland to create new work with students. Seeing a working professional in the midst of the creative process can stimulate the student's own imagination. 

MARGARET JENKINS has developed a similar type of mentorship approach, but one-on-one. The artistic director of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company says that she was disillusioned with "drive-by criticism" where "somebody smart drops in, says a few things, and leaves." In her California-based program, which is called Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange, pairs of self-selected mentors and mentees like Joe Goode and Erika Shuch spend

xt/javascript"> 40 hours in the studio together. They form a relationship over much more than the piece of choreography which they have at hand, meeting with the other participants and taking walks on the beach and trips to museums together. The mentor becomes a trusted guide who can offer ongoing support. 

SARA HOOK, an associate professor in the Department of Dance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says that any real accomplishment in the arts is due to a combination of natural ability' and the study of a form. "You give them the chance to make informed choices. You give options," she says. Rather than let a student add new movement to a phrase, for example, a teacher might say, "Look at what you already have, see how many possibilities there are in your first movement; go back and develop that." With new eyes, a student goes deeply into his or her original movement idea, creating a richer, more focused statement, instead of an add-on sentence. 

Ultimately, regardless of the differences in methods, it's likely that as long as dancers feel the need to express themselves through movement, they'll find a way to make dances. Rhodes says of the Juilliard students, "They're up there nearly every night until 11, dancing around the studios." 

And even if they don't attain that rarity', a choreographer's career, their dancing will take on greater confidence and sense of self from the hours spent experimenting. 

Choreographer Kathryn Posin staged her new Scheherazade for the Milwaukee and Louisville Ballets and will teach "The Craft of Choreography" for Regional Dance America this summer.

2005 Dance Magazine, Inc.