Before writing this blog Dream Choreo took the time to figure out exactly what coaches just like you want out of their choreographers. We surveyed throughout Social Media to find out the main reasons’ coaches keep and drop choreographers. We received a lot of interesting feedback, but by far, the most often used answer was without a doubt, professionalism.

So, what does it mean to be professional? How can you tell right away when someone is a professional? Finally, what does utilizing professional services do for your business? We reveal answers to these questions in this blog post but are always interested in hearing your opinions as well! Make sure to comment at the bottom of this post with any ideas you may have as well!

 

This graphic is what we used when open answer polling the industry. We received answers from many different industry professionals. Looking at defining professionalism further came down to 4 main mantras.
The first being “Treat Others With Respect”
A true professional is able to separate personal objectives and feelings from his craft and work. It is a customer first mentality. This mentality cannot be achieved without tuning in to the team, coaches and athletes, and ensuring that everyone involved feels valued and important. The best professionals are selfless and are no longer the macho, fierce, “doesn’t take no for an answer” shark in the water types.

Google Dictionary defines Respect as follows:
re·spect

/rəˈspekt/

noun: respect; plural noun: respects

1. a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.

“the director had a lot of respect for Douglas as an actor”

In my experience choreographers can have trouble with focusing too much on their expertise in the routine building and knowledge of the scoresheet. This can in turn cause neglect and create a lapse in respect for the coaches’ knowledge of their team’s personnel, and individual coaching abilities. When a choreographer makes you feel valued and makes certain to listen and do what you want through compromising, or accommodating, then you know the choreographer is on the right track to professionalism!

 

Another important quality to be held for a professional is to be able to
“Keep Your Word”.
Google defines Trustworthiness clear and concisely.

trust·wor·thi·ness

/ˈtrəs(t)ˌwərT͟Hēnəs/

noun: trustworthiness

the ability to be relied on as honest or truthful.

“he has to prove his trustworthiness to you”

There’s a chance of what is possibly one of the most creative types in the world to be ever changing and adjusting things. This should not flow over into a choreographer’s communication though! It’s absolutely fine and in fact beneficial in their actual work just not when it comes to what you say you’ll do, when you say you’ll do it, and how well you say you’ll do it. This also coincides with making sure contractual agreements are upheld in terms of cost and payments. A fickle choreographer or one who throws monkey wrenches in plans, is not punctual, or seems to always have an excuse for why something couldn’t happen is not the professional choreographer we are attempting to describe.
Two factors that can be related to an individual’s professionalism are Appearance and Reputation.

These two factors are described in the same section because of their comparable elements. One deals in the concrete while the other is abstract, but both have repercussions as to how one is judged by others.
judg·ment

/ˈjəjmənt/

noun: judgement

an opinion or conclusion.

“they make subjective judgments about children’s skills”

Why is what others think about a choreographer important? While many are raised hearing comments like “Don’t worry what others think about you” the truth is when young athletes are involved reputation and appearances matter most. Take the metaphor of food appearance for example. If something looks odd, poorly put together, or disheveled, the likelihood of you eating it go down. In terms of personal appearance. Dressing and grooming appropriately shows that one respects themselves. It shows off the bat that a person is trying to put their best foot forward. Reputation is more important than appearance because parent’s, present customers, and potential customers of your business want to feel comfortable, safe, and in good hands when they are in your building or entrusting you with their children.

Appearances do matter. If what you see and what you hear are good things, then you are one step closer to the professionalism you are seeking.

Finally, your choreographer should exceed expectations routine-wise. This doesn’t necessarily mean to be the best choreographer in the world. Or even to have phenomenal work. It’s all about perception.
ex·pec·ta·tion
/ˌekspekˈtāSH(ə)n/
noun
a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future.
“reality had not lived up to expectations”

Even if there’s an average choreographer who is being upfront about their mediocrity in the marketing and communication of their work then there is an opportunity to still be a professional. There are non-verbal and abstract ways of communicating correct or incorrect messages. For example, a highly priced service gives the impression that that service is high quality. So, before any communication has taken place directly, expectations are high. Managing expectations is the name of the game for professionalism. Never overpromise and under deliver. It is a surefire way to customer dissatisfaction!
In terms of professionalism which of these is most important to you?
Our short answer is that they ALL should be! Any combination of these 3 areas without a 4^th can be detrimental to the bottom line of your business, and the relationship with your customers!
Of course there’s something we’re missing when it comes to professionalism, but maybe you can help us with commenting below!
ALSO if you would like more information on what an amazing choreographer should offer, check out our previous blog.

 

You can discover through easy and proven ways how to save resources and help guarantee you can spot high quality choreography. You’ll love the results that come from knowing what you’re looking for.

Often a scoresheet will produce a need for your team’s choreography to have very specific elements in order to score high. Competition creates a difference between performing arts choreography and scoring rubric choreography, but there are still factors that can help you judge the quality of what service you’re receiving.

Here are 11 ways to analyze your routines!

The Process:

This is the most important way to see if you are getting what you need. When the sessions are enjoyable and full of memorable moments you can tell you’re getting high quality service.

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The Props:

Maybe your choreographer has incorporated some type of prop into the routine or is thinking outside of the box in terms of uniforms, banners, or cloth. This is one way to know your choreographer is giving you truly creative work.

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The Performance:

Are your kids being instructed to serve up emotion, faces, and expressions to the judges that will create moments? I’ve even seen teams yell entire phrases of their music on the floor. Memorable noises can take a routine to the next level.

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The Intro:

How are your athletes taking the floor? What choreographed movement are they doing before they start the routine? What mood or tone has the choreographer created to set the stage for the rest of the show?

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The WOW:

The scoresheet has many requirements for each section. If each piece of the routine tends to a part on the scoresheet and nothing else, then you want to question how good of a choreographer you’ve chosen. There should be WOW moments. At least one part of the routine should take your breath away literally.

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The Time:

Routines are only 2 ½ seconds. This amount of time should never feel like it is lasting too long! Making sure the routine builds, crescendos, and energizes is important. If you find yourself waiting or even worse, wishing for the end of the routine, Find someone new!

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The Athlete:

In cheer each team has its own personality. Can your choreographer give athlete-specific and appropriate moves that your kids will enjoy performing? Did they ask your kids to see any special talents they had in terms of flexibility or tumbling? Specialization is the best way to maximize your team’s talent! No two routines should be the same.

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The Purpose:

Does the routine make sense? Does the timing of movements make sense? There is a time and place for the random in art. Unfortunately, it rarely comes about in Competitive Arts with a foundation in a scoring rubric. Creativity and randomness are not mutually exclusive.

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The Eye:

Make sure you are not confused on what to look at during an eight count. If you are watching the routine and feel like your eyes are darting back and forth up, down left, right, then you run the risk of judges missing skills, or not being able to enjoy the routine. Levels and spacing can help direct the eye. There is beauty in simplicity.

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The Copycat:

Seen everything in your routine before? Get a new one!

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The Floor:

Formations should use the entire floor but also weave intricate webs and patterns of movement in transitions. Where the athletes are put should actually also create a picture that is unique or pleasing to see.

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Stay tuned for next week’s blog post and comment below with any other elements you look for in great routines!

Remarkable customer service creates loyal coaches for life who will refer a choreographer to entire networks. Since not every team and every coach will have the same needs variety is a must. You need to consider the cumulative factors that go into a great routine and what’s most important for you before booking.

Generally, choreographers should be able to include travel in their price listings. It saves hassle and surprise fees later for coaches. Services by choreographers should not be one and done. In this competitive industry the BEST choreographers are communicating year-round with your company, whether that’s through social media, text messages, or even face-timing into a practice! You know you picked a great service if you’re getting routine consulting, score-sheet reviews, and offers for upgrades and revisions throughout the year.

Below are a few of the services a highly esteemed choreographer should be listing!

 

Full Routine

Top-to-Bottom choreography is what is usually expected for this type of offering. Knowing what that means seems simple but depending on the quality and professionalism of your choreographer it could mean a million things!

A full routine should come with at least 12 hours of instruction time, 2:25-2:30 minutes taught to the athletes, completed 8 count sheets for the music, and a video mark-through. Average pricing for this service should be around 3,000$ per team.

 

Routine Outline

This is another option that is very similar to a full routine. The difference is the stunt sequences and pyramids are left free for coaches to include exactly what they want for these sections. These sessions should have at least 10 hours involved instead of 12. Every section should have a transition and usually the cost for this has an average of 2500$

Single Sections

Single sections are perfect for when your team has had too many injuries, kids quit, or a routine area that is just not scoring well. These sessions are usually 3-4 hours and can really make a big difference in the middle of competition season. Pricing should usually be around 500$ Expect these types of a la carte offerings to add travel fees to the price!

Clean Up/Guest Coaching

When your athletes are about 8 months into the season and are starting to hear your voice sound just like the adults in Charlie Brown clean up camps are the perfect solution!

This is also great for fluffing a routine’s motions or spicing up a team’s season with some fun! This pricing should also be close to 500$.

Creative Stunt or Pyramid

When you know a stunt technician and creative genius this is the route to go. Some of the best routines are built when a coach brings in a choreographer that specializes in stunts and pyramids to come in and give the most important part of the routine separately. Then you bring in that movement and dance specialist for the routine composition. This is not doing the most! Making sure you have the perfect mix is one way to ensure victory later!

Dance

Routines can sometimes take a long time to finish. If you want to make sure a team doesn’t have to make changes to a pyramid early in the season for unnecessary reasons all you need to do is schedule a Dance session later during October or November! It’s the perfect way to not fill up your athlete’s plates all at once. A dance session should be around 600$

Upgrade

Finally, It’s the coveted upgrade! This camp’s purpose is to take your routine to the next level! Seeing the final result of this kind of camp can bring a lot of joy. It makes for a pretty great social media post too!

The List

So, here’s a list of what you should be able to order from a choreographer!

• Full Routine
• Routine Outline
• Single Sections
• Stunt/Pyramid Choreography
• Clean Up Camps/Guest Coaching
• Dance
• Upgrade
• Routine Analysis
• Staff Training

And here is what should be included throughout the season if you’re spending more than $2,000 on a service for one team!

• Social Media Engagement
• Scoresheet Review
• Routine Consulting
• Return Trip (Only Charged for Travel)
• Positive Experience
• Discounts (When Booking 3+ Teams)

The best of the beset provide excellent customer service. That means constantly checking in with your coaches and making sure they are happy the routines, results, and the process of booking.

Use this list as a benchmark for your choreographer decision making. And check out Dream Choreography’s Services!

Shakeem Soanes is a 28-year-old choreographer, tumbling coach, and college-educated marketing student who runs Dream Choreography and works with teams all over the country of different levels.

Shakeem’s professional network has hundreds of coaches who use choreography services annually.

Many of his network members reach out for advice on having better performing and better learning athletes through posts, with questions such as “How can athletes pick up movements the first try” and “Would you recommend adding more time to choreography sessions?”

Learning and executing choreography quickly is an area you can help your athletes improve. Take 5 minutes to look below and see how!

• DON’T Wait For Someone Else To Do Motions

Athletes after being taught a sequence will often wait until someone else is doing the motions in front of them and synchronize their movements with that person while watching them.

Then once they try without that person they were watching, whether it’s the choreographer or a teammate, they are lost without them.

In order to get your team to save time and become efficient you need to get their muscle memory better! Learn with what you see but remember it with the body.

Encourage your athletes to practice as soon as they can without relying on others as soon as they are instructed. Consider this taking the training wheels off and you’ll see the results quickly!

 

• Fail Forward, Then Forget

The choreographer’s job isn’t only to meet the skill level of the team they are working with. It’s also to push those limits and help the team grow. Sometimes athletes will not be able to keep up.

It may be a concept that’s new or a skill the athletes are messing up. Sometimes choreographer’s move on before everyone gets it to save time, then the athlete is even further behind when the new part is explained.

Coaches and athletes are usually trained to make every little thing perfect but being able to be okay with “almost there” and proceeding is important.

There are month’s after choreo where kids can figure it out.

Use water breaks, or times where that kid isn’t being taught, to clarify, correct, and help, but don’t let it slow down the team from learning the routine.

 

• Stop Moving And Just Watch

Sounds like what you aren’t supposed to do right? Earlier we talked about how the eyes can be bad!?!

The thing is, choreographers aren’t experts in details, they are experts in movement and creativity. There are many visual details that will never be told to your team verbally.

Imagine going to a session and having a choreographer that explained every little detail using words, a power point, brought a book on choreography that they passed around. Sessions would never end.

So, have your kids know to breathe for a second every time something is being taught and take a second to watch. Watch the upper and lower body, look for body language, and how fast or slow they are moving. The more present you are the better!

Tell them these things and watch them grow!

 

• Learn Their Favorite Team’s Dances

Just like making a Tik Tok, or asking parents for what you want, things your team kids know how to do extremely well, learning how to take in choreo quickly takes practice.

Learning dances at home through watching YouTube and picking up the movements is extremely tough and time consuming. Especially since the way those kids are learning can’t explain and break down anything.

They’ll pick up skills that will make the actual sessions easy-peasy!

 

• Use Different Choreographers For Different Teams

Using different choreographers for different teams will help expose your kids to different styles and qualities of movement throughout the years.

This will help them help each other over the years and create more well-rounded athletes. Whether they are learning emphatic stomp movements, or sassy snap-filled motions your athletes will be able to pick up the meaning and move with precision!

It also gives the choreographer more to work with and a freer range of creativity.

 

For tips on what you can do as a coach yourself to help your choreographer check out our first post!

If you’ve decided to go into business of coaching America’s youth in competitive cheer, you’ve made an amazing decision. With thousands of families across the world engaging in All Star Cheerleading, there are plenty of lives you, as a coach, can influence in a positive way!

Coaching the sport is extremely rewarding, that reward is also affected by how successful teams are at competitions. One-way coaches can make their season better is through great pre-choreography actions.

First, you want to make sure you pick the right choreographer. You want to know they are professional and have a good reputation. There’s nothing worse than picking a choreographer that lacks skill or can’t show up on time. These are important factors.

But, a great choreographer isn’t all it takes to have a successful session. You need to act in more ways. This blog post gives 5 tips to help you get routines that give you goosebumps!

1. Teach Seat rolls and the “Hug” motion.

There’s no doubt that getting to a session with athletes who are unable to do a seat roll can slow down a session. Making sure that your athletes can hug low and properly also helps to make certain parts of routines look more visually appealing!

 

 

2. Find your best jumpers and your worst jumpers.

 

The same goes for those who motion, tumble, and dance well! Listing these qualities out on paper can help create a chilling routine!

3. Set up and finalize stunt groups.

This is a HUGE part of the scoresheet and most routines start in this section. (Be willing to change a base here and there)

4. Buy name tags and a sharpie

Learning 30 different names takes about 5 whole minutes. If you’re flying in a choreographer from out of town every minute counts! Name tags allow the choreographer to find out more information with those 5 minutes and build relationships. This can help create a better bond!

5. Finally… Know their favorite Starbucks drink!

Yes, I’m serious. If you know your choreographer’s Starbucks drink, then you can help jumpstart those creative vibes! The choreographer probably hasn’t seen his bed in 3 weeks and just took a 4am flight to make it to your team on time. Starbs can be the difference maker!

 

Use these 5 tips to help create an amazing experience for your athletes and for your choreographer. They’ll love you for it and you’ll be one happy coach! Check out our about page Dream Cheer for more information on our choreography! You’ll be glad you did!