How to Remember Choreography: 8 Ways to Learn Dance Moves

If you want to remember choreography faster, it’s important not to rely on repetition alone.

You’ll learn dance moves more reliably when you break the routine into recognizable patterns, give important movements clear mental cues, and rehearse the sequence in ways that make it easier to retrieve from memory.

On this page, I’ll show you seven practical ways to do that, including how to:

• Recognize and remember movement patterns faster
• Give unfamiliar dance moves memorable names and associations
• Use a Memory Palace to keep sequences in order
• Remember repetitions and body positions
• Employ music as a recall cue
• Improve your movement awareness through observation
• Turn rehearsal into a more memorable practice process

I wish I had understood these principles when I performed the role of Eugene in Grease. Learning the song involved in my part wasn’t a problem, but remembering the choreography was much more demanding.

Since then, after years of studying and teaching memory techniques, I’ve come to see why some people appear to pick up choreography almost effortlessly. Often, they aren’t simply blessed with a better “dance memory.” They have more patterns available to recognize, more ways to label what they’re seeing, and more cues that help one movement trigger the next.

That’s encouraging, because these are skills you can develop.

I also continue to apply the same memory principles while studying Qigong and related movement practices. My students in the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass have told me they’ve adapted them to activities ranging from martial arts to ballroom dancing.

So rather than telling you to simply “practice more,” I’m going to show you how to make each practice session more memorable.

We’ll start by helping you understand pattern recognition, one of the most important advantages experienced dancers rely upon.

How to Remember Choreography: 7 Proven Tips

Before we get into the tips, this point is important to understand. A major reason some people learn dance moves faster than others comes down to two words:

Pattern recognition.

Some people simply have more experience in the field of dance. They can not only see what certain dance routines consist of, but their knowledge gives them a strong basis for comparison based on:

• Similar moves
• Faster recognition of body parts involved
• Comparison to other genres and styles

This helps experienced dancers remember moves faster because learning a dance routine comes down to praxis. Praxis is defined as having five stages:

• Ideation
• Motor planning
• Execution
• Rehearsal
• Performance

Basically what this means is that the more knowledge of dance you have, the stronger you are in the ideation phase. This is the part where you pre-visualize yourself engaged in the movements.

Over time, this process contributes to procedural memory, the kind of memory involved when a learned movement becomes increasingly automatic.

If you struggle to pre-visualize dance moves, try active image streaming. It should give you a boost so you do better during the motor planning and other stages.

With this context in mind, let’s look at some specific tips that will help you remember choreography basics and specific nuances fast. 

One: Know The Definition Of Dancing

According to Lyn Paine, author of the Complete Guide to Primary Dance, dance is at least two things:

• Movement
• Expression

Noting these two levels gives you a huge memory cue: Many people are so focused on memorizing the moves, they forget to mentally note the emotions or ideas behind the expressions.

But you can use knowledge of the intent behind the dance to create a mental frame or field that helps you connect the dots. 

As mentioned above, knowing the genre can help us as well. You can connect new moves you need to memorize with ones you’ve seen in similar or related types of dance. Or you can use contrasts to help you remember movement patterns. 

Two: Name The Parts

The basic glossary of dance moves is not so huge. You could easily memorize it in a day or two. 

How? Use a Memory Palace. It’s an essential tool that can also help you memorize what dance moves look like. 

For example, if you’re trying to remember “feather step,” you might place an image of yourself stepping on feathers in a corner of your bedroom. 

To remember the term “enchufla,” you could imagine the music group Enya eating enchiladas while performing this move on a UFO. Have this imaginary association take place in another corner of the bedroom.

This kind of imaginative association will help you remember both the word and the movement. You will also have a location to refer to in your mind so you can “find” the information. 

Repeatedly access the image and decode it back to the target information a small number of times. This kind of deliberate active recall helps you practice retrieving the movement rather than merely looking at it again.

Three: Visualize The Moves In A Memory Palace

A Memory Palace is a mental recreation of a building you’re familiar with – such as your dance classroom. 

If you were to take that space and imagine it, you could mentally “project” the body positions you need to assume onto the walls – once of which will probably be a mirror. 

To perform the projection, you will want to have the specific dance move in mind – and know it by name. 

Then, imagine yourself in the room looking at the wall and project how the body position is supposed to look onto the wall. You might want to split the wall into fourths so you can mentally refer to various references points.

In other words, you might use these divisions to help yourself remember where in space your right hand should be relative to the imaginary center line.

If a sequence has four moves, you can place one mental representation on each wall in a room. Extend from there into the next room, hallway or outdoor location from there. Or move to another Memory Palace.

This process will help you with breaking the moves down into smaller parts, which some memory experts call “chunking.”

Four: Use A Mnemonic Number System

Sometimes you have to remember more than what moves to do. You have to remember how many times to repeat them.

In this case, it’s very “handy” to have the Major System on your side.

For example, if you have to repeat a move 5x, you’ll have a mental image that instantly helps you remember this requirement.

You can also number your body. 

There’s no cookie-cutter way to assign numbers to the body, but you could experiment with:

1. Head
2. Right hand
3. Left hand
4. Right shoulder
5. Left shoulder
6. Chest
7. Stomach
8. Right hip
9. Left hip
10. Groin
11. Right thigh
12. Left thigh
13. Right calf
14. Left calf
15. Right foot
16. Left foot

For example, my image for 01 is a tragedy mask. Movements using the head could draw upon this image. 

If you have to move your right shoulder, then your left hip, followed by your right foot, the sequence could be 04, 09, 15 and you would string together visual images to help you remember that pattern quickly. 

Five: Become More Mindful Of Movement

In Mabel Elsworth Todd’s book The Thinking Body, she lists eight ways to become more conversant with the movements of your body:

• Pilates-Based Conditioning
• Rolfing
• Feldenkrais
• Alexander Technique
• Ideokinesis
• Body-Mind Centering
• Bartenieff Fundamentals
• Laban Movement Analysis

The more familiar you are with your body and how it moves, the more points of reference you’ll have to make connections.

Six: Know The Music

The more you understand rhythm and notation, the more you can make connections to particular moves. 

For example, if you know that a move corresponds with a C chord in the music, you can create imagery that helps you remember the move better. 

In effect, we’re using the music to create cues that trigger our recall of the required moves.

Knowing the names for various rhythms also builds up your pattern recognition. The more you know about dance, the more you can know about it. Your brain will make more connections on autopilot.

For more on using mnemonic associations with rhythm, notes and musical sequences, see my guide to music mnemonics and my tutorial on how to memorize a song.

Seven: Record Yourself

These days, it’s easy to set up a camera and record yourself practicing. You get instant feedback, and not just from yourself. You can post your routines to the Internet and get instant critiques from thousands of people.

But the point is to give yourself an external mental picture of your performance. Observation will help you reflect in ways that improve both the ideation, motor planning and execution stages. It will also help you check for the all-important level of expression many dancers miss, making them look robotic instead of natural and dynamic. 

Eight: Play Games

Too many people practice dance on their own. But when you practice with others, you can turn learning into a game.

For example, you can start with just one move. All of your friends have to perfectly imitate the move.

Then you add a second move, which they have to imitate. Add a third, fourth and so on. The first person who incorrectly executes the sequence loses the game.

Of course, there are no losers at the end of the day. Everyone wins by turning learning into a game. Always be sure to highlight this point when learning with others in order to keep motivation high and frustration at bay. 

But don’t run from the challenge if a culture of competition arises. Focusing on competing with others has an interesting effect, especially when you start introducing errors into your progress with the movements.

The reason why this aspect can be helpful even if it temporarily harms your ego is simple:

Mistakes form a huge part of how we learn. That’s what makes games like the one I just described for learning dance moves so powerful. Errors help form new ideas that allow you to correct your approach and move faster through the various stages of learning.

How To Learn Dance Choreography

The science on how to learn faster is clear – including for dance moves and any skill that involves choreography. You just need to pre-visualize what you want to learn, apply some of the simple memory methods we discussed above and follow through by getting your body involved, and then observe the process. 

Since many dance routines are complex, it only makes sense to give your mind the most powerful visualization tool for retention and recall that exists. So if you want to remember dance steps using a Memory Palace, check out this full free course for more on how to use this incredible tool:

As you continue to have fun, keep these final pointers in mind:

• It’s okay to have high expectations, but keep things realistic. Know your goals with learning dance and base them on reality so you can be sure to succeed.
• Make sure you choose the right clothes. Memory techniques can help, but they can’t promote flexibility and proper circulation. 
• Manage your space and stick to a schedule. You will remember more faster by keeping a regular practice. An established routine is much easier to maintain when you assign a specific location special status for your dance practice.
• Let go of the outcome. Learning anything is a marathon, not a race. 

If you’re interested in more, there’s an Australian memory champion who also dances professionally. Check out my interview with Anastasia Woolmer for more details.

She actually reversed the process we discussed today by using movement to help her memorize numbers, further proving that the flexibility of these techniques is amazing!

So what do you say? Are you ready to explore some new ways of memorizing movement you might not have tried before?