Wikipedia

Dance notation

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Dance notation is the symbolic representation of dance movement, it is analogous to Movement notation but can be limited to representing human movement and specific forms of dance such as Tap dance. Various methods have been to used to visually represent dance movements including:

The primary use of dance notation is the documentation, analysis and reconstruction of choreography and dance forms or technical exercises. Many different forms of dance notation have been created but the two main systems used in Western culture are Labanotation (also known as Kinetography Laban) and Benesh Movement Notation. Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation and DanceWriting are also in use, but to a lesser extent.

Another purpose of dance notation is the documentation and analysis of dance in dance ethnology. Here the notation is not used to plan a new choreography but to document an existing dance. Dance notation systems developed for the description of European dance are often not applicable and not appropriate for the description of dances from other cultures, e.g. the polycentric dances of many African cultures, where the movement of the body through space is less important and a great deal of the movements takes place inside the body. Attempts have been made by ethnomusicologists and dance ethnologists to develop specific notation systems for such purposes.

The first computerized notation system, which displayed an animated figure on the screen which performed the dance moves specified by the choreographer, was the DOM dance notation system, created by Eddie Dombrower on the Apple II personal computer in 1982. (See Dance Notation Journal, Fall, 1986, 4(2) pp. 47-48.)

Several notation systems are used only for specific dance forms, for example, Shorthand Dance Notation (dances from Israel), Morris Dance Notation (Morris dance), and Beauchamp-Feuillet notation (Baroque dance).

Hutchinson Guest's seminal book Choreographics (1989), compares thirteen historical and present-day dance notation systems (with visual examples) and through 'one to one' comparisons illustrates the advantages, and disadvantages of each system. The book is good introduction to the development and implementation dance notation systems.

Notation and Computers

In the field of Dance technology there are four areas of dance notation research and development:

  • notation editing software for the creation of printed notation scores
  • machine-readable versions of existing dance notation
  • handwritten and / or machine readable dance notation for computer animation and Human use
  • machine specific movement notation such as Motion capture data

See also

Further reading

  • Cage, J. and Knowles, A. (1973) Notations. Reprint Services Corp. ISBN 0-685-14864-5
  • Drewes, Henner (2003) Transformationen - Bewegung in Notation und digitaler Verarbeitung in Fellsches, J (Ed) Folkwang-Texte Bd. 18. Verlag Die Blaue Eule, Essen. ISBN 3-89924-057-X
  • Hutchinson Guest, A. (1989) Choreographics: A Comparison of Dance Notation Systems from the Fifteenth Century to the Present. Routledge ISBN 90-5700-003-2
  • Neagle, R.J. and Ng, K.C. (2003) Machine-representation and Visualisation of a Dance Notation. in Proceedings of Electronic Imaging and the Visual Arts - London July 2003.

Dance notation systems

Dance notation software

Dance Technology / dance notation applications

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