History of Notation by Victoria Watts
The debate about the necessity of dance notation is pertinent in an age where it proves quicker and cheaper to record a performance on a Camcorder. However, the role of dance notation has always been a contentious one; its position marginal when considered against the pervasive oral tradition of ballet. This must in part be attributed to the sporadic development of a workable system, as well as to the fluctuating fortunes of dance as an art in Western culture. In 1588 when Arbeau published his "Orchesographie" the dancer at Court was restricted to a very specific carriage of the arms and body, a number of step arrangements and a variety of floor patterns. There had been no need to describe the arms and body, nor indeed the steps since only their sequence and the floor pattern altered significantly from dance to dance. It sufficed to place an abbreviation of the step's name (e.g. r for reverencia, or d for double) against the appropriate musical note and include an illustration of the floor plan. Arbeau did go to the trouble of giving written descriptions for each of the basic steps and positions as well as including many illustrations, without which his system would be unintelligible to the uninitiated. A presupposed knowledge of the steps was no bar to the system's success at the time however and it was in use for nearly 200 years. Louis XIV founded the first dancing academy in 1661. For many this act is seen as the defining moment for the inception of ballet, whose history and development can be clearly traced from this point on. As ballet developed and flourished as a social courtly activity, its variety and artistry increased. Foot work became more complex, as did floor patterns. A second method of recording dances gained currency. Feuillet, a leading dancer and choreographer of his day, published "Choreographie, ou l'art de decrire la danse" in 1700 which used an invention of Pierre Beauchamp to combine the the recording of floor pattern and footwork. An illustration of the Feuillet-Beauchamps system. To find out what it all means and how it works visit Virtual Feuillet - part of the Baroque Dance Project. This track drawing method set down the steps and dances which would later form the basis of classical ballet. (Although in many circles Beauchamps is credited with the invention of the five basic positions, there are thoughts that he was merely the first to codify them.) Translated into four other European languages, its popularity was widespread. Once again this system focussed on feet and floor. Until the 18th century women's ballet costumes had been extremely heavy and fell right to the floor concealing ankles and feet, and rendering any virtuoso movement impossible. All was grace and serenity in the minuet and pavanne. In 1721 Marie Camargo changed all this by daring to shorten her skirts a few inches and inspiring a change in the general costuming of dancers. This greater freedom led to a glut of dances concerned with the new wonders which could be performed by ankles and feet so long concealed. The arms and head were decorations, and the torso played little part. Everybody knew how to stand and carry the body when dancing, in the same way that all ballet students, at whatever level, know that legs should be turned out and toes should be pointed. No need then to write it down. The Romantic era in ballet took flight in 1831 with Filipe Taglioni's choreography for "Robert le Diable". The mood of this era was captured perfectly in the lithographs of the great ballerinas Marie Taglioni, Fanny Elssler, Carlotta Grisi - creator of the role Giselle - and Fanny Cerritto; we see the further shortening of the ballet skirts, the softer shoe, and lighter costuming which allowed for increased virtuosity, and a freer, more expressive use of arms and body. It was only with the Romantic period that ballet became truly recognisable as the art we revere today. These advances, along with the need for a clearer indication of timing, conspired to bring about the next major development in notation. More information about the movement was required than could be adequately recorded in the Feuillet-Beauchamp system, leading several choreographers to attempt the use of stick figures. Arthur Saint-Leon, the original choreographer of Coppelia in 1870, a renowned Parisian dancer and ballet-master published his system in 1852. "Stenochoreographie ou Art decrire promptement la danse" placed pin drawings of dance positions below the musical stave. A similar system was proposed by Friedrich Zorn in his 1887 publication "Grammatik der Tanzkunst" . Although a step forward from previous systems, these stick figure systems had a number of inherent flaws. They showed dance as a series of static positions rather than a constantly changing flow of movement. The three-dimensional aspect was hard to capture on paper. By far the most troublesome flaw was that the pictures were drawn from the audience's perspective. To learn the movement back from the page a dancer would have to reverse everything they read from left to right and vice versa rather than being able to 'mirror' the image as they would a teacher or choreographer facing them in class or rehearsal. That is the situation as it stood at the turn of the century. After the flowering of ballet in the Romantic era, dance in Western theatre declined into a tawdry spectacle. Girls twirled meaninglessly to artless tunes watched mostly by lecherous men with a penchant for pretty faces and idle flirtation. It was not until early this century that ballet was rescued from this artistic bankruptcy in Western Europe. In Russia, under the patronage of the Tsar, ballet had survived and flourished. Next month I will pick up the story at this point and trace the development of the major notation systems of the Twentieth Century. Bibliography Benesh, R & Benesh J. Reading Dance. The Birth of Choreology. London: Souvenir Press Ltd, 1977. Haskell, A. Ballet. London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1938. Hutchinson-Guest, A. Labanotation. New York: Routledge, Chapman & Hall, Inc, 1977. Kipling Brown, A & Parker, M. Dance Notation for Beginners. London: Dance Books Ltd, 1984. Koegler, H. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Ballet. Oxford: OUP, 1977.
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www.ballet.co.uk/mar98/notation_history.htm revised: 8th March 1998 Bruce Marriott email, © all rights reserved, all wrongs denied. credits written by Victoria Watts © email design by RED56