I still remember the first time we tried "Ephemeral" in studio B. My dancer stood in center, Aurora's voice came through the cracked speakers, and half the room went quiet in a way that wasn't normal. That's the thing about lyrical—you can't fake your way through certain songs. They'll expose you.
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There's a reason Aurora's "Ephemeral" shows up in every serious lyrical competition season. It's not the vocals or the pretty production. It's that the song demands something most dancers spend years avoiding: genuine vulnerability. The sparse arrangement leaves nowhere to hide. You move, and the audience sees everything.
I once watched a student perform a solo to this track and abandon her technical security entirely halfway through. She started moving like someone who'd just lost something. Trophy be damned—the judges saw someone real up there, and that's the point.
Sia's "Unstoppable" gets played out, I'll give you that. But I'll also tell you why it works in ways that newer songs can't touch. The chorus arrives like a freight train, and your body has to answer it. There's no choreography that survives that build without dancers earning every beat. Sia's own voice cracks on the words, and that imperfection—that's permission. You don't have to be perfect either.
Here's my take: most "empowerment" songs make dancers perform strength. This one lets them feel it, even when they're falling apart.
We used "Oceans" for a competition piece three years ago and I've got complicated feelings about it now. The build is gorgeous—you can hear a duet unfolding in the crescendos. My partner and I would hit the bridge and something shifted in our bodies that we couldn't replicate in practice. Some of that was the song. Some of it was two teenagers who believed every word and didn't know yet what that meant.
I won't pretend this song doesn't ask something from you that feels almost religious. It does. If that's not your world, that's fine—but don't dismiss what that belief does for a dancer willing to commit to it.
Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" shouldn't work. Pop song, radio hit, everyone knows it. But there's an unofficial version floating around studios—that stripped-down piano arrangement—and when you strip away the production, you're left with something simple and almost embarrassing in its honesty. We worked a duet to it once where the choreography was just two people reaching for each other and pulling away. Simple movements, but we made the audience lean forward every single time.
That's the trick nobody talks about: sometimes less arrangement means more space to move like you're actually feeling something.
And then there's "Fix You."
I don't know how Coldplay made a song that sounds like road headlights on a dark highway but somehow also like every conversation you've been avoiding. The first time I danced to it, I was nineteen and still angry about something I couldn't name. I didn't have any choreographic plan. I just moved like I was trying to outrun what the song was saying—and then I stopped fighting it.
Coldplay has written better songs since. They haven't written one that's more honest than this.
Three years into teaching, I've learned this: the song matters less than what the dancer is willing to let it open in them. Technical execution will get you a score. But the audience—I don't care if it's a competition crowd or thirty people at a recital—the audience knows the difference between someone performing emotion and someone offering it.
These five songs are where I've watched that happen most often. Your list will look different. Build it from the moments where you stopped protecting yourself, where you let the music see you unstaged. That's where the good stuff lives.
If you want to share what you're working with, I'm genuinely curious. Drop it below—I'll listen.
