  Choreography creation requires high proficiency in artistic and technical
skills. Choreographers typically go through four stages to create a dance
piece: preparation, studio, performance, and reflection. This process is often
individualized, complicated, and challenging due to multiple constraints at
each stage. To assist choreographers, most prior work has focused on designing
digital tools to support the last three stages of the choreography process,
with the preparation stage being the least explored. To address this research
gap, we introduce an AI-based approach to assist the preparation stage by
supporting ideation, creating choreographic prototypes, and documenting
creative attempts and outcomes. We address the limitations of existing AI-based
motion generation methods for ideation by allowing generated sequences to be
edited and modified in an interactive web interface. This capability is
motivated by insights from a formative study we conducted with seven
choreographers. We evaluated our system's functionality, benefits, and
limitations with six expert choreographers. Results highlight the usability of
our system, with users reporting increased efficiency, expanded creative
possibilities, and an enhanced iterative process. We also identified areas for
improvement, such as the relationship between user intent and AI outcome,
intuitive and flexible user interaction design, and integration with existing
physical choreography prototyping workflows. By reflecting on the evaluation
results, we present three insights that aim to inform the development of future
AI systems that can empower choreographers.
