Tag Archives: selection

Songs for jazz dance routines

Below are some music ideas for your next jazz dance routine. These will work for competition or recital. If you have other great song ideas, leave them in the comments below and I’ll add ’em to the listing in the header above (Song Suggestions). If you want to use any of these songs and need them edited perfectly for competition, we’d love to serve it up for you. If you like these, we also have song suggestions for Tap, Contemporary, Lyrical, Musical Theater, and Kid Friendly Hip Hop. There are even a bunch more songs for Jazz Routines.

Get more Squirrel Trench remixes at Legitmix

I Get A Kick Out of You – Tierney Sutton

Dirty Laundry – Bitter:Sweet

You’re The One That I Want – Grease (New Broadway version)

Real Love – Katherine McPhee & Elliott Yamin

Sneakernight – Vanessa Hudgens

What is Jazz? – Club des Belugas

Some Kind of Wonderful – Joss Stone

Flirt – Cameo

Just You, Just Me – Nat King Cole

I Am – Hillary Duff

A primer for editing dance music

I was scouring the intertubes to see what is already out there for information about techniques for editing music for dance routines destined for competition. I came across an excellent PDF by a dance dad in Oregon named Jim Lambertson, aimed at other dance moms and dads, but really, it’s great for dance studio owners and dance teachers as well.

Here’s the page where you can download this 3-page PDF called Music for Dance Competitions. It’s a good read, and quick too. Here’s an excerpt:

Music Quality
Music quality isn’t scored at competitions because it isn’t considered to be a creative element of a dancer’s performance. This outlook is somewhat ironic because, as you will discover in this article, a great deal of creativity is needed to produce high quality dance music.

Why Quality is Important
If music quality isn’t judged at competitions, why should dancers be concerned about the quality of their dance music? Music quality is important because the dance music is part of a dancer’s overall presentation, and every dancer’s goal is to put forth the best possible presentation.
Although music is not explicitly judged, it can definitely influence scoring. Pops and clicks, muffled music and poor splices all serve to distract the judges and give the impression that a performance is somehow less than professional. In fact, the better the music quality, the more attention the dancer, rather than the music, will receive from the judges and audience.

Deep Cuts

Ever been to a dance competition, only to discover that another studio is using the exact same song as one of your dancers? Well, it’s only natural, because what is currently popular is popular all around the country at the same time.

What should you do? Don’t fall victim to the over-popular trap. While your dance students might be excited to do a routine to Lady Gaga’s Pokerface, the judges eyes’ will glaze over when they hear it for the fourth time in the same day, making it harder for them to give YOUR student’s routine the attention it deserves. The judges have a long enough day as it is.

The answer is to find deeper cuts. It’s even okay to use a popular artist, but don’t use the most popular songs. Find the ones that aren’t overplayed and use one of them instead. Or find another artist who employs the same style, but is less well known.

As I come across songs overused in dance competitions, I will post them, along with their antidotes, here. I feel this is such an important part of selecting a song for dance routines that I have created a page called Antidotes, which you can see at the top of this page. Here are the first two Tired Songs, along with their Inspired antidotes:

Tired:
Jai Ho (You are my Destiny) – From the motion picture Slumdog Millionaire, by A.R. Rahman, Sukhvinder Singh, Tanvi Shah, Mahalaxmi Iyer & Vijay Prakash (other versions include the Pussycat Dolls)
Inspired:
Chhod Na Re (Remix) – Vishal and Anand Raaj Anand

Tired:
Pokerface – Lady Gaga
Inspired:
Sexy Chick – D. Ghetto

Feel free to submit your antidotes in the comments, and I’ll add them to the Antidote page!

Also, I have started a library of song ideas, grouped into dance categories. Check out the Song Suggestions in the menu at the top of the page for some inspiration!