dance notation

dance notation, the recording of dance movement through the use of written symbols.

Dance notation is to dance what musical notation is to music and what the written word is to drama. In dance, notation is the translation of four-dimensional movement (time being the fourth dimension) into signs written on two-dimensional paper. A fifth “dimension”—dynamics, or the quality, texture, and phrasing of movement—should also be considered an integral part of notation, although in most systems it is not.

Dance poses recorded through pictures date to early dynastic Egyptian wall paintings, ancient Greek vases that depict dancing figures, and iconographic examples from many other early cultures. Verbal descriptions of dances have been found in India, notably in a book dating to approximately the 2nd century bc. In Europe during the 15th to 17th centuries, many treatises on dance were written in the form of descriptions often accompanied by illustrations. However, none of these can be clearly defined as a system through which actual dance movements (as opposed to positions) could be captured and subsequently faithfully reconstructed.

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The Renaissance (c. early 15th–early 17th century)

The first device to be considered a true notation system was found in Cervera, Catalonia (now part of Spain): two manuscript pages, dated from the 15th century, revealed the first use of signs to represent the letter abbreviations used in Renaissance Italy, France, and Spain to record the popular basse danses (“low dances”). These were letter abbreviations for the five well-known steps: R for révérence; s for simple; d for double; b for branle; and r for reprise. Dances were composed of a sequence of these steps in different arrangements.

In his book Orchesographie (1588), the Frenchman Thoinot Arbeau provided valuable descriptions of the dances of that period, placing the names of the dancer’s movements next to the vertically arranged music. His system, however, cannot be called a notation system as such, because no symbols were used.

The Baroque period (c. 17th–18th century)

At the French court of Louis XIV, patterns traced on the floor were an important part of formal dances; drawings of these pathways, with signs added to indicate the steps used, were the basis of the first important, widely used dance notation system. Originated by the ballet teacher Pierre Beauchamp, it was first published by his student Raoul-Auger Feuillet in 1700 as Chorégraphie; ou, l’art de décrire la danse (“Choreography; or, The Art of Describing the Dance”). The system spread rapidly throughout Europe, with English, German, and Spanish versions soon appearing. Well suited to the dance of that era, which featured intricate footwork, this notation became so popular at court and among the educated classes that, for a while, books of collected dances were published annually. Indications for the appropriate arm gestures were later developed to accompany the intricacies of the footwork. However, at the watershed of the French Revolution, when dance for the educated classes at the royal courts declined, the Feuillet system—which was unsuited to theatre dance with its greater range of movement—fell into disuse.

The Romantic period (late 18th–late 19th century)

In the mid-19th century two important systems were published, both based on the idea of “stick figure” representation. That of the renowned French dancer and choreographer Arthur Saint-Léon, illustrated in his book Sténochorégraphie, was published in 1852. It combined slightly abstracted figure drawings with musical note indications for specific timing—not a surprising addition considering Saint-Léon’s musical background (he had been a child prodigy on the violin). His inclusion in his book of the pas de six from his ballet La Vivandière provided a valuable example of a Romantic ballet, and it has been studied and performed into the 21st century. The second of the two major mid-19th-century notation systems was that of the German dance teacher Friedrich Albert Zorn, whose book Grammatik der Tanzkunst (1887; Grammar of the Art of Dancing) employed a more directly pictorial stick figure, placed under the accompanying music to indicate timing. A highly respected dancing master, Zorn focused on detailed descriptions of the exercises and steps required in dance training. He included a selection of dances, notably the cachucha solo made famous in 1836 by the Austrian ballerina Fanny Elssler.

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The close affinity between music and dance made inevitable the idea of using musical notes to record movement. The first such system was developed by Vladimir Ivanovich Stepanov, a dancer of the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg; it was published in Paris with the title Alphabet des mouvements du corps humain (1892; Alphabet of Movements of the Human Body). Stepanov’s method was based on an anatomical analysis of movement and thus was applicable to the recording of any type of movement. Stepanov’s method was adopted by the Mariinsky, where it was used to record the repertory. Of the scores notated during that period, many were incomplete, rapidly written notes intended as memory aids. The dancer and choreographer Léonide Massine learned Stepanov notation as a student at the Imperial School of Ballet and made use of it in developing his own choreographic theories. His Massine on Choreography was published in 1976.