There is little quite like watching a great dance number live on stage. From ballet to ballroom, movement has a way of holding an audience that words alone cannot. Choreography is a part of almost every musical, used to advance the plot, define a character or simply to thrill, and it often does the work of a whole scene without anyone saying a thing.
In this piece we look at how choreography earns its place in a show, how a routine actually comes together, and at the dance behind three very different productions: Hamilton, Mary Poppins and Six.
How choreography tells a story
Movement tells us a great deal about a character. A confident lead might be given bold, expansive steps, while a more guarded figure moves in smaller, more controlled gestures. Once that sense of character is clear, the choreographer can use dance to carry the story itself, shaping a routine with a beginning, middle and end so that it both reveals who someone is and moves the plot forward.
A good example is the Barbican revival of Anything Goes. The title number is built around a large tap routine led by Reno Sweeney, who taps her way across the deck of an ocean liner and draws the sailors into the dance with her. The speed and swagger of the number tell you everything you need to know about her energy and charisma before she has sung another word.
Inside a choreographer’s process
Building a routine tends to move through three broad stages. It begins with gathering material, where the choreographer draws on anything from traditional steps to historical dance forms for ideas.
Next comes developing those ideas into phrases. A phrase is a series of movements joined into a single run, and the skill here is connecting one step to the next so that the sequence feels consistent and nothing looks out of place.
Finally there is structure. The story and the music decide the shape of the piece, with the length of a song and the characters involved all feeding into the final design. Working alongside the director, composer and the wider creative team, the choreographer assembles those phrases into the finished number.
Hamilton
Hamilton is one of the most striking shows for choreography currently playing in the West End. The routines blend hip-hop and street dance with traditional musical-theatre styles, and choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler won the Olivier Award for Best Theatre Choreographer for his work on the production.
That mix of styles mirrors the score, which sets hip-hop alongside more conventional show tunes, so that music and movement stay locked together. Blankenbuehler also uses movement to draw character: Alexander Hamilton, ambitious and restless, is given sharp, dynamic steps in numbers like “My Shot”, while the more cautious Aaron Burr moves with smaller, controlled gestures. Setting the two side by side makes the contrast between them part of the storytelling.
Mary Poppins
Mary Poppins returned to the West End in 2019 and played until 2023. The production was choreographed by Matthew Bourne and Stephen Mear, whose work on the original staging won the Olivier Award for Best Theatre Choreographer.
Having two choreographers on one show is unusual. Producer Cameron Mackintosh brought the pair together because a production on this scale called for it, and the two had in fact first collaborated on Mary Poppins for its original 2004 staging. Returning to the show years later let them revisit the sequences with fresh eyes, updating several with more contemporary movement while keeping the dances working in step with the sets and costumes.
Six
Six opened in the West End in 2019 and has since become an international success, with a UK tour, a Broadway run and productions around the world. A large part of its appeal is the choreography by Carrie-Anne Ingrouille.
For Six, Ingrouille drew on real pop performers. The show reimagines the six wives of Henry VIII as a pop group, and each Queen is modelled on a well-known artist, with Catherine of Aragon taking cues from Beyoncé. As in Hamilton, the choreography moves freely between styles, pulling together hip-hop, house and jazz into a single high-energy concert.
The enduring legacy of West End choreography
Across all three shows, the same thing holds true: choreography is doing real work. It gives us a sense of character, heightens a moment and helps set the tone of a production, often without drawing attention to itself.
It is easy to forget, while you are swept up in a number, how much effort goes into it, from the first gathered steps to the finished routine on stage. That is the magic of West End choreography, and the craft of the people who build it.
You can find more on the shows mentioned here, and everything else currently playing, on our musicals page.
