IB Diploma Programme Dance SL (first assessment 2016; 2014 guide). This topic equips the COMPOSITION side of the externally assessed composition and analysis task (40% at SL): two dance works totalling 6-10 minutes composed by the student, plus an analytical statement on the processes of composition and analysis of one of the dances. Composition is taught as craft: motif, development, form and contrast serving intention, content and form. This handout teaches the compositional toolkit, the development methods and the reflective statement. All worked examples are original.

Must-know for composition and choreography:

A motif 动机 is a movement cell: the smallest phrase that carries the dance's intention, small enough to transform and recognisable enough to anchor the work. Composition grows by development 发展 of the motif: repetition (the cell returns, meaning accumulating), variation 变奏 (timing, dynamics or facings changed), transposition (the cell moves to a new body part or level), retrograde 逆行 (the cell performed backwards), and accumulation (cells stacked into longer phrases). The discipline: every development is a choice that serves the intention; decoration that develops nothing is cut.

Worked example. “Reach”, a trio: the motif is a reach that collapses at the elbow. Repetition seven times with shrinking range reads as exhaustion; variation in dynamics (sudden against sustained) reads as resistance; retrograde (collapse first, reach last) closes the work by reversing its story.

Form is how the work organizes time: the compositional structure 编创结构 (statement, departure, return; ABA; theme and mutations) must be audible to the eye: the viewer should feel the return. Within a work and across the submitted works, contrast 对比 runs at two scales: inside one dance (levels, tempo, density, dynamics) and ACROSS the submitted works: the two must contrast in subject matter or compositional approach, or the submission reads as one work twice.

Worked example, continued. The second work “Doorframe” contrasts “Reach” completely: unison walking material, no floorwork, motif built from a stopped gesture rather than a flowing reach; the third “Counting House” contrasts again by structure (accumulation only, no retrograde).

The statement analyses the processes of composition and analysis of ONE of the dances: not a diary but an account of decisions: which compositional problems arose (the collapse reading as injury rather than exhaustion), which solutions were tried and chosen, and what the making taught for future development. Key terms and concepts of composition are applied, sources attributed.

Worked example, concluded. The “Reach” statement: the problem (the collapse read as accident), the trials (slower collapse, weighted collapse, silent collapse), the chosen fix (the weighted collapse with the breath audible), and the lesson (a motif's meaning is set by its development, not its shape).

• The motif small, recognisable, intention-carrying (motif).

• Development methods chosen to serve intention, decoration cut (development).

• The return legible; contrast within and across works (contrast).

• The statement analysing decisions and problems, terms applied (statement).

• The worked “Reach”, “Doorframe”, “Counting House” set understood (worked). Boundary notes: the examiner must see the making: compositional decisions visible, sources attributed, the performance interpreted. All worked examples are original.