choreography
Americannoun
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choreographies
plural
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the art of composing ballets and other dances and planning and arranging the movements, steps, and patterns of dancers.
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the technique of representing the various movements in dancing by a system of notation.
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the arrangement or manipulation of actions leading up to an event.
the choreography of a surprise birthday party.
noun
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the composition of dance steps and sequences for ballet and stage dancing
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the steps and sequences of a ballet or dance
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the notation representing such steps
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the art of dancing
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of choreography
1780–90; < Greek chore- (stem of choreía chorea ) + -o- + -graphy
Explanation
Use the noun choreography to describe the plan for how dancers will move on a stage during a show, play, or dance. You might particularly love the choreography in the movie West Side Story. You can use the word choreography to mean "dance" or "ballet," but its specific meaning is the notation a choreographer makes on paper as she plans out the complex movements and steps made by dancers. Choreography is particularly important in musical theater, ballet, opera, and dance recitals. The Greek roots of choreography are khoreia, "dance," and graphein, "to write."
Vocabulary lists containing choreography
Dance - Introductory
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Dance - Middle School and High School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
We studied the choreography, mimicking his strut to the ballroom stage, the hip swivels, the disco arm roll as he sings about getting Brad and Janet a satanic mechanic.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 26, 2026
Beefed-up body language, brutal action choreography and a soundtrack packed with needle drops do all the talking.
From Salon ● Aug. 22, 2026
Told she was not pretty enough for the movies, she turned to choreography instead and built an influential career on Broadway, where she worked on “Oklahoma!”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 17, 2026
Fight choreography was made to look more like brawling, with Chau noting performers dialed back “strong shapes, motions and lines” into characters that are “a little bit more broken down” to underscore the noir aesthetic.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 5, 2026
In the middle of our choreography, we split into two groups to make a path for our emcee to walk down and grace the audience with her beauty.
From "Like Vanessa" by Tami Charles
The 15-minute orchestral piece has inspired seven different choreographies, but is most widely associated with the version created by Bejart, which remains the best known.
From Barron's ● Feb. 25, 2026
Two fellow fans created a group charged with making 'tifos', the huge choreographies displayed by fans before kick-off.
From BBC ● Nov. 11, 2024
A lot of the conversations that we’re having are always so much about labor, or the choreographies of labor and what kind of work can get built in those spaces.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 27, 2024
Local club teams such as Casablanca’s Wydad AC, Raja CA and Rabat’s AS FAR have die-hard fans known for vibrant chants and colorful choreographies.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 13, 2022
She is too discriminating for the mechanical big drops and woo-hoo euphoria of mainstream E.D.M., too artisanal for the slick choreographies, songwriting factories and carefully calibrated career moves of the industrial-pop complex.
From New York Times ● Sep. 17, 2020
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
