This document provides guidance for students on developing ideas and treatments for dance and choreography projects. It includes suggestions for stream-of-consciousness writing to generate initial ideas, as well as topics to consider like themes, stories, locations, and visual or aural elements. The document instructs students to develop their ideas into a 200-400 word treatment describing the core idea, look, atmosphere, structure, and soundtrack. It concludes by assigning students to collect visual stimuli and advising the next workshop will focus on constructing frames and choreographing the camera.

1. The Treatment
PER007-1 Applied Choreography: Dance and Innovation
Dr Louise Douse

2. Stream-of-consciousness writing task
• Keep your hand moving. (Don’t pause to reread the line you have
just written. That’s stalling and trying to get control of what you’re
saying.)
• Don’t cross out. (That is editing as you write. Even if you write
something you didn’t mean to write, leave it.)
• Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. (Don’t even care
about staying within the margins and lines on the page.)
• Lose control.
• Don’t think. Don’t get logical.
• Go for the jugular. (If something comes up in your writing that is
scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy.)
(Goldberg, University of Bedfordshire 2005, pp. 10-112)

3. Have a clear intention
• Starting points
• Another work of art
• Movement idea
• Camera/editing technique
• Location
• Issues/concerns
• Theme/narrative/formal/visual/aural
University of Bedfordshire 3

4. Ideas
• Themes
• Emotional
• Experiential (speed/transformation/flight)
• Symbolic (love/one against many)
• Physical (water/earth/gravity)
• Action (gesture/climbing/running/falling)
• Stories
• From the world around you
• Fairy tales
• Historical events/lives
• Own experience
• Imagination
• Formal/Abstract
• Technical framework (camera in motion/speed on screen)
• Restrictions (body parts/continuous zoom/looping and repetition)
University of Bedfordshire 4

5. Ideas
• Visual
• Location
• Object
• Clothing
• Colours
• Aural
• Music/narrative
• Sound/image
University of Bedfordshire 5

6. Suggestions
• Ideas
• A twisted shoulder, a head thrown back, a look to the side
• If my footsteps follow yours, do we make a path?
• Titles
• The body as landscape
• “A series of coincidences”
• Reflection/refraction
• Collision course
• ‘The life of objects
• Fractured view
University of Bedfordshire 6

7. Developing your idea
• Who/what are the people/objects on screen?
• What are they doing?
• Why are they doing it?
• Where are they?
• What are they wearing?
University of Bedfordshire 7

8. Treatment
• Writing down your ideas for clarity
• Audience
• Research – historical events/accuracy
• Original
• Honest – don’t be afraid to be different
• Intelligent not obscure
• Succinct
• Who, what, why, where, clothing
• Approach to soundtrack?
University of Bedfordshire 8

9. Treatment
• A concise expression of the core idea
• A description of the look and atmosphere of the work
• Idea of structure
• Description of soundtrack
• 200-400 words
University of Bedfordshire 9

10. Task
• Collect visual stimuli
• Pinterest pin board
• Look through the lens
• Use your camera phone!
University of Bedfordshire 10

11. Next Workshop
Teaching week 6
Calendar week 46
Week beginning
Monday 10th
November
Workshop 1:
Constructing the
Frame &
Choreographing
the Camera
McPherson, K. (2006)
‘Dance and the camera,’ in
Making video dance: a
step-by-step guide to
creating dance for the
screen. London:
Routledge, pp. 23-40.
University of Bedfordshire 11