A Choreographer is the term or title for a person who creates ballets or dances. To be a choreographer, you must create original dances or choreographic works, but the steps themselves do not necessarily need to be inventive. Meaning, a dance made by a “ballet choreographer” will contain tons of steps that are part of classical ballet technique and referenced all around BalletHub, but its the sequence, type of attack and style, mood, music and costumes that mostly make dances and ballets different from each other.
This is not to say that a choreographer also doesn’t invent steps, it is just often called “movement” as opposed to “creating a brand new step.” Remember, classical ballet technique is a collection of steps and terms that help describe a certain movement. So a choreographer may somehow use five or ten steps or terms together to create a few counts in a piece, but the new look or “step” may never actually have a name or label put to it. This sort of creativity is often what makes a choreographer successful as the audience not only gets to see “something they’ve never seen before” but actually like it for whatever subjective reason.
Basically, anyone who puts together a few dance steps could call themselves a choreographer, just as anyone who snaps a few pictures with a camera can call themselves a photographer. But the distinction of a professional choreographer is that he or she is paid to create and set dances on dancers, not just as a hobby or for free.
