La Cachucha, by Friedrich Albert Zorn.

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 used to visually represent dance movements including:

• Abstract symbols
• Figurative representation
• Track or path mapping
• Numerical systems
• Music notation
• Graphic notation
• Letter and word notations

Usage[link]

The primary use of Dance notations is the preservation of classic dance 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.

History[link]

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).

Ann 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.

An example of a dance pose and its corresponding "dancewriting" notation.

In 1975 Ann Hutchinson-Guest reconstructed the choreographer Arthur Saint-Léon's Pas de Six from his 1844 ballet La Vivandière along with its original music by the composer Cesare Pugni, for the Joffrey Ballet. The piece was reconstructed from Saint-Léon's own method of dance notation known as La Sténochorégraphie. In 1978 Pierre Lacotte staged the Pas de Six for the Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet, who still retain it in their repertory. The Pas de Six has since been staged by many ballet companies all over the world, and is known as either the La Vivandière Pas de Six or the Markitenka Pas de Six (as it is known in Russia).

One of the most famous collections of dance notation is the Sergeyev Collection, which was recorded in the method of notation devised by Vladimir Ivanovich Stepanov. The collection documents the famous Imperial Ballet's (today the Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet) repertory from the turn of the 20th century - the majority of which were staged by the great choreographer Marius Petipa. The collection includes Petipa's original choreographic designs for such ballets as The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, Le Corsaire, Swan Lake (staged with Lev Ivanov). Other works included are the original version of The Nutcracker, and the Imperial Ballet's definitive Coppélia. It was with these notations that many of these works were first staged outside of Russia, forming the nucleus of the Classical Ballet repertory.Hanya Holm was the first Broadway choreographer to have her notations copyrighted, for her work on Kiss Me Kate.

Notation and computers[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

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[link]

• Labanotation
• Sergeyev Collection
• Stepanov Choreographic Notation
• Motif Description (a subset of Labanotation)
• Benesh Movement Notation also known as "Choreology"
• DanceWriting
• Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation
• Action stroke dance notation
• Beauchamp-Feuillet notation
• Dance score

Further reading[link]

• 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

Dame Monica Mason DBE (born 6 September 1941) is a ballet dancer and has been the director of The Royal Ballet, since 2002.

Early life[link]

Monica Margaret Mason was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1941. A talented dancer, she moved to Britain at the age of 14 to join the Royal Ballet School.

Royal Ballet[link]

At the age of 16 Mason joined the Royal Ballet as the Company's youngest member, and became a principal dancer in 1968. She worked closely with the choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan, who created the roles of Lescaut's Mistress in Manon, Calliope Rag in Elite Syncopations, Summer in The Four Seasons and the Midwife in Rituals for her.

Mason was also given the role of the Chosen Maiden in The Rite of Spring that had been originally created by Diaghilev for Lydia Sokolova in the 1920s. Her last leading role was as Nursey in Isadora by Kenneth MacMillan, in 1981, although she continued to appear in mime roles as a guest artist with the Royal Ballet for some time after that.

Administrator[link]

Following her retirement as a principal dancer, Mason continued to work for the Royal Ballet company and in 1984 she was appointed Principal Répétiteur to the company. In 1991 she became Assistant Director of the company under Sir Anthony Dowell. Following the company's move to its new headquarters at the Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden, Mason replaced Dowell's successor, Ross Stretton, as Director in late 2002.^[1] She recently announced her retirement and will leave The Royal Ballet in August 2012^[2]

Damehood[link]

Mason was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2002. In the 2008 Birthday Honours she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) .

References[link]

External links[link]

• Londondance.com
• Royal Ballet official site

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Alwin Nikolais (November 25, 1910 in Southington, Connecticut – May 8, 1993) was an American choreographer.

Life[link]

Nikolais studied piano at an early age and began his performing career as an organist accompanying silent films. As a young artist, he gained skills in scenic design, acting, puppetry and music composition. It was after attending a performance by the German dancer Mary Wigman that he was inspired to study dance. He received his early dance training at Bennington College from the great figures of the modern dance world: Hanya Holm, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Louis Horst, and others.

In 1940, in collaboration with Truda Kaschmann, his first modern dance teacher, Nikolais received a commission to create Eight Column Line, his first ballet. The work was presented at one of the events of Hartford social season that counted Salvador Dalí and Léonide Massine as honorary patrons and was well received.

After teaching two years at his own studio and touring the US with dancers from Hanya Holm's company, Nikolais did active duty in the Army during World War II as a master sergeant in criminal investigation. Nikolais relocated to New York City following the war and resumed studying with Hanya Holm. Eventually, he became Holm's assistant, teaching at her New York school and at Colorado College during the summers. In 1948, Nikolais was appointed director of the Henry Street Playhouse,which had been left in a state of transition and had to be entirely re-established. He formed the Playhouse Dance Company, which was later renamed and known as the Nikolais Dance Theatre. It was at Henry Street that Nikolais began to develop his own world of abstract dance theatre, portraying man as part of a total environment. Nikolais redefined dance, as "the art of motion which, left on its own merits, becomes the message as well as the medium". He Stated "The Province of art is to explore the inner mechanisms and extra dimensional areas of life and, out of the exploration, to produce its findings translated into the form of the artist's media." It was also at Henry Street Playhouse that Mr. Nikolais was joined by Murray Louis, who was to become a driving force in the Playhouse Company, Nikolais' leading dancer and longtime collaborator.

In 1956, the Nikolais Dance Theater was invited to its first of many appearances at the American Dance Festival. With this, his total dance theatre had begun to take shape, and the company established itself in the forefront of American contemporary dance. With the company's 1968 Paris season at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Nikolais' impact on dance grew internationally. Following Paris, the company began performing around the world. Here began a long artistic relationship with the Théâtre de la Ville which began in 1971 and continues now after his death.

In 1978, the French National Ministry of Culture invited him to form the Centre Nationale de la Danse Contemporaine in Angers, France. In December 1980, he created his 99th choreographic work Schema, for the Paris Opera. At the same time, his choreography for an opera by Gian Carlo Menotti was being staged at the Vienna Staatsoper.

In 1987, Nikolais was awarded the National Medal of Arts, bestowed by President Ronald Reagan, and the Kennedy Center Honors, conferred during a three-day round of official Washington events, which culminated in a CBS telecast featuring the Nikolais Dance Theater. Alwin Nikolais gave the world a new vision of dance and was named the "father of multi-media theater." ^[1]He received the City of Paris' highest honor, the Grande Medaille de Vermeille de la Ville de Paris, as well as medals from Seville, Spain, Athens, Greece, and 30 other cities both foreign and national as well as a special citation from New York City's Mayor, which he shared with Murray Louis. Often referred to as the American Patriarch of French modern dance, Nikolais is a knight of France's Legion of Honor and a commander of the Order of Arts and Letters.

His accolades from the world of arts and letters included the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award; the Capezio Award; Circulo Criticos Award, Chile; Emmy Citation Award; Dance Magazine Award; the Tiffany Award; and the American Dance Guild Award. In 2000 he was inducted into the National Museum of Dance and Hall of Fame.

Nikolais was granted five honorary doctorate degrees, was twice designated a Guggenheim Fellow, and was the recipient of a three year creativity grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Mr. Nikolais and his work have been featured in numerous films and television programs in the US and abroad. In July 1987, Nik and Murray, a feature-length documentary film about Nikolais and Murray Louis, directed by Christian Blackwood, aired on the PBS series American Masters.

Nikolais was renowned as a master teacher, and his pedagogy is taught in schools and universities throughout the world. He died of cancer May 8, 1993, in New York and is buried in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

Nikolais purchased the first Moog analog synthesizer system.

His style[link]

Nikolais employed lights, slides, electronic music, and stage props to create environments through which dancers moved and, more important, into which they blended (Dance Magazine). He would commonly use props with esthetic as well as functional purposes, for instance, a traveler moving across the stage would hide a crossing and simultaneously create a volume of motion. His production MASKS, PROPS, and MOBILES was accredited to have created and popularized modern multimedia theater (Mazo, Joseph), although, some critics rejected Nikolais work as dance, especially when Nikolais transformed the bodies of dancers by covering them in plastic bags that would stretch and change shapes in Noumenon; a section from Masks, Props and Mobiles (1953). He avoided overused themes like psychosexuality, good vs. evil, or heroes and heroines.Instead, he chose to move away from the life of the individual and focus on group action. He preferred also to develop his own style of movement, and not to replicate the moves of previous time periods or other composers.

Nikolais' artistic mandate was for meaning to be conveyed strictly through movement. He characterized his stage presentations as “decentralizing” the dancer, so that humans were only one of the theatrical elements on stage.Alwin Nikolais despised of modern dance’s obsession with self.^[2] Nikolais’s dance technique is a barefoot one, a tradition handed down from the days of Isadora Duncan, who, we are told, took off her shoes in empathy for the ancient Greeks. However, Nikolais does not use bare feet out of homage. To him the bare foot is practical. Its muscular and tactile functions are essential to the performance of the total body. Nor does he utilize the bare foot and then ignore it. Apparent mutilation of the body design by the termination of the costume may disturb the image and when it does, he uses whatever device will serve his aesthetic. Many such devices are primary to the concept. In “Discs,” the opening dance in Kaleidoscope, the dancers wear large colored aluminum discs on one foot, which serve in various aesthetic capacities. Originally intended simply to extend the dancer’s range of balance by providing a larger than normal base, they also add a vertical extension as a great “toe shoe” might; they increase motional dynamics with their added weight in swinging. The shape, color, and material were aesthetic decisions, producing moving visual elements in themselves, and the heavy aluminum gives a satisfying, large, loud clang when the dancers stomp the floor. In a section of Stratus and Nimbus (1961) and again in Scenario the dancers wear small sound-producing fiberboard circles on each foot. The use, the material, and the size of these “tappers” were aural decisions. The specific sound was the initial criteria. Although they are not seen, they do alter kinetic values by the manner in which the dancers must move to produce the desired sound. ^[3]

In the 1950s a black face in a cast caused a sensory blocking. The theatergoer saw race, and all the social implication that race bore at that time. Whether positive or negative vibrations ensued in the spectator’s sensorium made little difference to Nikolais. The spectator whose senses were preoccupied with racial differentiation was not perceiving Nik’s images. Hence, his early treatment of the face was concerned not only with varying its uni-statement but also with preventing audiences from experiencing this sensory blocking. He used makeup: purple, red, green, yellow, half a face one color—half another, as in Kaleidoscope; or strips of color following the costume design, as in Prism; or he used whiteface, as in Imago. This use of makeup does not create character, but rather design, and is a part of the total concept of the dances in which it occurs.^[4]

He was notoriously well known in the dance industry because of his use of lighting. He would use light sources from every direction and level to create new shapes, spaces, and silhouettes. With his modern, new style, he felt that most music was ill suited for it. He went back to his days as an early musical composer and designed his own score on electronic tape. Within the Henry Street Playhouse, the tapes would be played over a seven speaker system distributed throughout the room to give another time and space dimension. The combination of cast, original lighting and music, with modern dance techniques, gained The Nikolais Dance Theatre a world-renowned reputation in the theatrical arts. Receiving high regards from New York State Council on the Arts, Hofstra University, Rutgers University, Duke University, Hunter College, and Brigham Young University. With his own school and theatre, he withdrew from the spotlight of the dance world, known amongst colleagues and peers as a shy, reserved individual, allowing his partner Murray Louis to deal with more public affairs. Mr. Nikolais was renowned as a master teacher, and his pedagogy is taught in schools and universities throughout the world.^[5] Nikolais, referring to his students: "Each student is encouraged toward the highest aesthetic values, and upon creative fluency and achievement, as well as technical skill. The job of the teacher is to pursue, institute and constantly anticipate the best possible activities coinciding with this idealistic thesis."

Some famous works of art[link]

The first production by Nikolais, after the creation of the Henry Street Playhouse, was called KALEIDOSCOPE and premiered at the American Dance Festival. It aired in the spring of 1956 and showcased his company of seven dancers, intensively trained by him, for the past 7 years. The next production to follow PRISM, BEWITCHED, AND CANTOS was an improvisational performance by the dancers that utilized mirrors and the specific use of score and lighting. The act was performed on four separate occasions and was different each time. TOTEM, an act centered on religion and fetish with an element of barbarism, was performed at the Fifth Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. The act received serious criticism. Following this, Nikolais went the complete opposite direction for his next performance, IMAGO. This act was meticulous and orderly; the performers were placed in similar make-up and headdress to accentuate unity. A much larger production, SANCTUM, showcased 27 performers, compared to the standard 10-15 Nikolais commonly used. This act dealt with opposites: natural vs. man-made, reality vs. imagination, primitive vs. sophisticated. The performance sold-out for 6 straight weeks in New York.

Bibliography[link]

• Francesca Pedroni, Alwin Nikolais, Palermo, L'Epos, 2000. ISBN 88-8302-143-6
• Dance Theatre of Alwin Nikolais, Company Publications, Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis Papers, MSS. 181: Alden Library, Ohio University. Mazo, Joseph. "The Nik of Time." Dance Magazine July 1993: p.28.

Sources[link]

• National Museum of Dance
• Dance Magazine

http://artsalive.ca/en/dan/meet/bios/artistDetail.asp?artistID=21 http://bearnstowjournal.org/theaterAN.htm https://www.library.ohiou.edu/archives/dance/overview/nikolaisbio.html

References[link]

1. ^ https://www.library.ohiou.edu/archives/dance/overview/nikolaisbio.html
2. ^ http://artsalive.ca/en/dan/meet/bios/artistDetail.asp?artistID=21
3. ^ http://bearnstowjournal.org/theaterAN.htm
4. ^ http://bearnstowjournal.org/theaterAN.htm
5. ^ http://www.artsourcemanagement.com/nikolais.htm

External links[link]

http://www.danceheritage.org/nikolais.html https://www.library.ohiou.edu/archives/dance/overview/nikolaisbio.html http://www.artsourcemanagement.com/nikolais.htm http://artsalive.ca/en/dan/meet/bios/artistDetail.asp?artistID=21 http://bearnstowjournal.org/theaterAN.htm