November 10, 2005

Dance Notation and Why Dance Pieces are not Documented

In my previous post, I wrote about The Dance Insider's Paul Ben-Itzak's call for a new management for the Dance Notation Bureau.

In this post, I would like to begin to offer my vision for how a revitalized Dance Notation Bureau can play a key role in ensuring the future financial health and well being of dancers, dance companies and choreographers from around the world.

Some background first: The Dance Notation Bureau documents and preserves dance works. What this means is that trained dance notators, using in this case a system of notation called Labanotation, create written records of dance works. With this written record, choreographers can then read this form of notation and replicate the dance piece. It's the same concept as reading a piece of sheet music. A composer writes out the music and then a person can play the music by following the notes on the sheet music.

But there is a big problem with Labanotation - it is too difficult to learn and very few choreographers even use this methodology for preserving their dance pieces or re-staging previously documented performances. That means that Labanotation is used by a small group of dance notators and librarians who only document and preserve a very small, select group of dance works. To date, the DNB has scores for under 700 dance pieces - that's a pitifully small number.

Now let's go back to music notation. My guess is that our system for notating music goes back more than 500 years. Today this European-based system is universal. All composers and musicians use it to document their music and all musicians - casual and professional - use it to play music.

I'm not much of a piano player, but I can open-up a music book with easy to play Mozart pieces and play them on a piano. I'll need to practice a piece 25 times or more, but I will figure it out and I will eventually be able to play it in a moderately decent manner.

Why is it that I can read the music notation? Because I taught myself. I bought a book with pictures and instructions on how written notations correspond to keys on the piano.

Why could I learn how to read this music notation in a short period of time? Because it's relatively easy. I'm not talking about sight-reading; I'm just saying that from an intellectual standpoint, I can read and identify the written notes on sheet music. I can teach anybody of just about any age how to read these notes.

Why was I willing to spend time learning this notation system? Because I know that it is a universal system and once I learn it, I can read any piece of music for any style of music. Technically, at the time, I didn't think about the fact that music from around the world was notated in the same manner. But, if I knew that there were different competing systems of music notation, I would have been frustrated. I would wonder why do I have to learn to read different notation systems in order to play different pieces of music? Is there something inherently different from one musical work to another? The answer is obviously no.

Now let's look at dance notation in a different light:

1) There are competing dance notation systems. The Dance Notation Bureau uses Labanotation. There is also the Benesh Movement Notation system and other approaches. There is no one universal system for notating dance movement through space and time.

2) Labanotation and other systems of notating dance are too difficult. If they were easy to use, more people would use them.

3) Dance notation systems are only used by highly trained experts to notate very specific limited numbers of dance works. That means that over 99.9% (it's actually higher) off all professional and non-professional dance performances from around the world are not notated. Most people don't even know that notation systems exist and even if they did, these systems take way too much time to learn and use.

Now to my main point:

As long as dance does not have a universally used and accepted notation system that is easy to learn, use and read dancers, dance companies and choreographers will be deprived of important revenue streams.

In my next post, I will explain how such a universal, easy to use notation system can transform the careers of dancers and choreographers.

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