All I want for Christmas

is to be done with choreographing floor routines!

Eleven down, four to gooooooo!!!

You should be daaaancing, yeah

Brittany, the team's best dancer, watches me as I execute a ball change. "I can't do that."

I slow it down. Show her in front of the mirror. Tell her to copy me.

"Do it again," she says. "I'm confused."

"Didn't you used to do ballet?" I say.

"Yes."

"You can do this." I show her again.

"Nope. Not happening."

"All right," I say. "Something else."

When in doubt--plunge the routine to the floor. Stop, drop, and roll. Throw in a flexible kick or two, hope it hits the right notes. Certainly this is more complicated than a ball change, but now Brittany's following me. Whatever works.

Just like me, you've got needs

And all eight of you need me all at once.

The piecemeal (anyone else have this as an elementary school spelling word?) choreography practice quakes when the girls have reached different points of preparedness. Four have finished routines. Four have parts. The four with finished routines want to do their routines to the music. The four with parts want to, too. Out of eight, only two have no questions about their routines.

The other six fire questions like a dissertation defense, ignoring that I'm helping another girl.

"What do I do after this pose?" ::strikes pose from middle of the routine::

"Did I leave something out?"

"What do I do now?"

"I forget [insert entire section of routine]..."

"Am I with the music?"

"Can I do [insert skill] in my routine?"

"Can I go next?"

"Can I go after her?"

"Can I go after them?"

Audio and visual overload. Music on and off, laughter on and off, "Watch the corner!", "Girls, keep practicing during her routine - you don't have to stand there and watch" (of course they all do anyway), "Wait, what do I do after this?"--

Then they're gone for the day. I keep the routines. The poses, the timing. They forget, but I don't.

Hollie Vise + One Republic = Glory

As I prance around making up floor routines, a piece of beauty:



from gymnastike.

Bird by Bird, Pose by Pose

It's still September. But soon it will be October, then November will whisk past, and then meet season descends.

The girls need beam routines. Some need floor routines. Some still look at me blankly when I ask if they've searched for music.

I've found a solution: the good old-fashioned assembly line.

Beam: I give them stations and take the first girl. We make up a mount. Send her to the next station and give the second girl a mount. We proceed in this manner until it's time to switch events. They all have at least a mount, a few poses, and one requirement (jumps, cartwheels).

Floor: is a bit harder. But I channel my old coach, who would listen to our music once and make up our routines. Always the routine fit the music. I was impressed then but really, unless you're hoedown dancing to "Requiem For a Dream," you can make the choreography match the music.

So I work it the same as beam. A starting pose, the first steps, a journey to one of the corners for tumbling. Sure, they don't all have music. Sure, one of the eight-year-olds wants to use an instrumental of "Teenage Dreams."

But it's either the assembly line or creating one master routine. While I know the latter would be faster, easier, it seems to me that the beauty of USAIGC is breaking away from doing the same routine as everyone else.

we've got a hot crustacean band

All right. We're doing this.

I sit the IGC girls down with a CD of music burned from YouTube. Someone, of course, asks what they need music for. The other girls fill her in.

"You don't have to use this music, but you can," I say. Translation: Please pick one of these songs and make my life easier.

They gather around the laptop. I skip the dramatic tracks and linger on the happy swing music. Granted, these girls are ten years old and on the cusp of "too cool for life." Soon they'll be on, "My life is too hard."

They listen. At the end, I ask if they liked any. "Number eight!" they all say. Arguments ensue. A game of "I'm thinking of a number between one and twenty" settles who gets number eight.

And what is that track? "Under the Sea." Not so uncool, after all.

Obfuscators Anonymous

I have the itch to complicate. I hear complex music and I want to hit every beat, rise with every ascending violin.

It's exhausting.

The girls untangle my webs. In fact, they cut right through: "I can't do that," they'll say when I create a dance step. Or they'll look at me with a mix of panic and fear. Take it down a notch, I know.

Thing is that I hate floor routines where the gymnast moves slowly and hits a few poses while the music plays frenetically. We've all seen this. Good music deserves a good routine. But good music + awkward performance = cringe.

So I'm trying to compromise. Do-able dance that still looks decent (I hope). After they've tapped out the required tumbling and dance, there's still so much music left...

But it's easier elsewhere. I step onto the beam next to Kasey's. "Follow me," I say.

Clean poses. All the elements. Flicks of the wrist (I like to say, "Ping!"). Get off the beam.

My mind is clear: Keep it simple.

Keeping It Classic

The energy of the crowd is unreal. It's not a dancer's routine, not an exercise in elegance and aesthetics, but...you'll see.

La mano de Dios

Choreography is all about marking territory.

Two summers ago I made up a routine for a younger girl in the gym. Our coach usually choreographed but she was too busy. I went to grad school and later saw the girl at a competition. Our coach had changed the routine, she said, "but I liked your version better." She seemed sincere.

I've seen this many times. The tweak of a pose, the switch of arms and legs, the removal or addition of passages. You can call it revision from more experienced coaches, and surely that's so, but I call it imprint. The coach's hand at work, a hint of the preferred flavor. I bet a girl who began at one gym with one routine could rotate through several gyms and return with a routine hardly like the one she started with.

Would I do the same? I haven't been faced with it yet. So far our routines are homegrown and no girls have switched into our gym from optional or IGC levels.

You ask again: Would I do the same? Truth be told, most likely. Yes.

Calling all maestros

Today I headed off Potential Floor Disaster 2010/11. On Monday, Natalie brought in floor music that was, well, not really music. It was more like beats with some semblance of a melody. Kind of what you'd hear at a club, but not as cool.

I tried but the creation process was labored, the dance skills having nothing to do with each other, and when I woke up at 8 this morning, I immediately kneeled on the floor to revise a section I'd pondered last night. Better, but still not right.

Luckily my boss saved me. "What do you think of Natalie's music?" she asked this morning.

"I'm not a fan."

"Yeah, it sucks," she said. "Her mom hates it, too. Let's change it."

Out of all the Level 5's and 6's, Natalie deserves a good IGC season after a disastrous first year of Level 6. But I don't want to hurt her feelings.

"Do you love this floor music?" I asked her after warm-ups.

"I like it," she said, and I think she already knew what was up.

Good. "You're a really good dancer and I think we should look for a piece that shows that off more."

"Okay." She shrugged cheerfully.

At least I wasn't lying. Natalie's tall and flexible, and when she actually straightens her legs, her leaps and kicks are dynamite. You won't find those at the club.

After running through a few ideas, I remembered Bond. My boss searched iTunes and liked what she heard, Natalie agreed, and so did her mom.

Thank you, fiddling women!

Now I call upon Friends, Coaches, Music Enthusiasts: Any suggestions for floor music? I've compiled a small collection to bring on Monday and while the girls are supposedly looking for music on their own, I like to be prepared. (Emeline, I'm looking at you.)

Rock on, tiny dancers!

Selling the Drama: All that glitters

can be turned to gold.

"Why do I get such low scores on floor?" Kathryn says.

"Because it looks like you're falling asleep in your routine," I say.

"Ohhh."

I firmly believe that if the presentation is good, you can sell anything. Especially floor routines. I never had the most difficult tumbling. Occasionally I fell on my face or off the floor. But if there was one thing I could do without fail, it was to perform my routine with love, joy, and drama. Sharp arms! Head turns! Plunges to the floor! Sword fights! With toes always pointed and solid jumps and turns, I'd often beat the girls with the big tumbling passes. No coach taught me the art of presentation; I had watched enough gymnastics competitions on TV and on old videos to see how it was done (back in the days when gymnasts actually danced in their routines). I took all of it in and put it back out with spirit and gusto.

It is time for my girls to do the same.

And it will be no small task.

"We are going to add pizazz to our floor routines," I say in January, emphasizing the word in hopes that it sounds exciting.

They look back at me with faces of, Um, okay.

I've already learned that calling out, "Lift your chin!" and similar directions does not work when the girls are mid-routine, especially when 1. they're tired and/or 2. on the verge of forgetting the routine if their concentration lifts for an instant. So we go back to the beginning of the routine. I instruct them exactly when to lift their chins. How to tilt their heads. What their hands should do at each instant. Where their arms should be. Over the course of several practices, we make it through the entire routine and then review.

Of course, some of them forget. Repeatedly. None of them match the robotic precision of the top teams. But then again, I never did either. Kelsey and Jamie start pulling in the 9.0's. So do the Level 4's. Their chins are up, they hear the music, they're learning to pay attention.