Roberto Fanni

Dance composition

ROBERTO FANNI (professional profile)
Professor in Motor Sciences, Dance Teacher, Choreographer and Dancer himself
He began his artistic training at an early age, studying music and his dancing career started in 1987 in Cagliari, Sardinia (Italy) with a professional course for dancers. later he got specialized in Rome (IALS Renato Greco, Balletto di Roma, Crazy Gang), but it was only in 1993, in New York that he won his first scholarship at the prestigious “Steps on Broadway”. Again, in New York , he went on studying for several years, carrying on his professional training and improving further his studies in ballet, modern, contemporary and tap dance with some of the most prestigious teachers and choreographers such as Michele Assaf, Suzy Taylor, Joe Lantern, Michael Owens, Patricia Wilcox, Fred Benjamin, Richard Pierson, Bob Rizzo, Lisa Hopkins, Milton Myers, Max Stone and Charles Goddertz. He also attended accredited schools such as the Broadway Dance Center, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, the Merce Cunningham, and Ballet Arts.
As a professional dancer and choreographer, he participated in major shows produced by different companies of Ballet and Modern Dance, Musicals, Operas, Operettas, Musical Comedies, Cabaret. He has composed a large number of choreographies for several Dance Studios and Schools, with which he has worked as a teacher since 1990.
In 2006 he founded a school of Dance and Company known as “Danzakalaris” and ,since then, he has also been directing it, organizing shows, workshops, joining in national and international competitions (www.danzakaralis.it).
Meanwhile, he developed his scientific and cultural education in P.E. and Sport Sciences: he graduated at the University of Cagliari (ISEF), with an extra Master Degree in Motor Sciences soon after. He also joined and completed a post graduate course at the University of Tor Vergata in Rome (110 with honors).
From 2000 to 2009, he was a lecturer in the Faculty of Sport Sciences in Cagliari, teaching “Theory, Technique and Didactics of Motor Activities” and thesis advisor for many three-years bachelors’ dissertations on Dance.
He is currently a P.E. teacher in High School. He is also a professor in the school of Sport for the National Olympic Committee, Didactic Division and he joined many scientific studies on the motor skills of Early Age. He is the author of several publications on Youth and Physical Activity and on Dancing Techniques and Teaching, along with books and articles published in Coaching & Sport Science Journal, SdS- Magazine of Sport and Cultural Review, Didactic of Movement, Kinesiology.
 
Mals 2022
Dance composition
Program of the course
Dance composition is learning how to make a dance. During the dance composition process you explore a movement idea by creating dance movement or selecting steps from some dance genres, then you manipulate these elements and materials of dance into movement modules of various lengths to compose a dance.
To understand how to use your tools for composition, you need to be familiar with choreographic design principles, structures, and devices. For a dance work to have solidity and value, the choreography should connect to aesthetic principles that underlie works of art.
When we talk about dance composition, we mean that we choose a choreographic material, we arrange it according to an aesthetic idea or project and we then we polish it. To do that, we need first to have some choreographic fragments to work with.
In dance, one of the most common methods for producing that first content of choreography is the practice of improvisation. We use it with the intention of developing innovative movement ideas and generally as the first step in the dance composition process.
In this course we will work on composing the choreography for groups.
This course will provide you some tools to compose easy choreographies for groups of students.
The aim topic of this course is to test out motor abilities, particularly coordination abilities, and to see how they can be improved by creating some variations on a basic choreography created for one dancer in order to convert this basic dance into choreography for two or more dancers,
The general methods of coordinative abilities training are:
1. Variations of movement (single phases, or single parts of the body)
2. Exercises with rhythmic variations or changes of execution time
3. Changes of spatial references
4. Symmetric execution of movements
5. Execution of series of laid down motor sequences in succession
6. Execution in pairs, trio, or with more partners which require dynamic, spatial or rhythmic adjustment to the other’s movements
These principles match choreographic principles that underlie a dance composition for group.
SOME OF THE COMPONENTS OF CHOREOGRAPHY FOR GROUPS:
1. Variations of choreographic sequences, levels
2. Time variations:
• unison (everybody at the same time),
• canon (beginning a same phrase in different but regular moments of the counting),
• dialogues (a dancer or a group of dancers moves while the other pauseS; they switch the situation several times),
• counterpoint (each dancer or group of dancers performs a different choreographic fragment at the same time) The choreographies have the same importance
(In particular, like polyphony, it consists of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melodies, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, which is called homophony)
3. Space distribution: creating geometric patterns (circles, triangles, lines, half circles…) symmetries and asymmetries, irregular shapes…
4. Ensemble types: duo, trio, quartet, etc., … soloist-group, …
We will experience four different choreographies, one for each unit, everyone starts from a basic sequence of steps and movements created for one dancer and is developed to be danced by a group according to the different kind of principles:
First unit
Chorographic variations: Symmetric execution and space distribution
• Different fronts
• Ensemble on synchrony, unison
• Execution on symmetry
• Different parts on synchrony (main part and background)

Second unit
Chorographic variations: Time and rhythm
• Different fronts
• Canon with two groups
• Ensemble on synchrony (sync), unison
• Different levels
• Same combination, different speeds
• canon with four groups (same part, different tempo)

Third unit
Chorographic variations: the performance of the spatial changes
• Different levels
• Different parts on synchrony (main part and background)
• Counterpoint with some contrast

Forth unit
Chorographic variations: the performance in collaboration
• Relationship of cooperation, complementary with the partner
• Guidance and Lifts
• creative composition to be joined with complementarity for partnership