[HN Gopher] Dance Choreography Notation (2017)
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Dance Choreography Notation (2017)
Author : mont_tag
Score : 97 points
Date : 2024-09-07 00:26 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (adafrobinson.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (adafrobinson.wordpress.com)
| Rygian wrote:
| Link to baroquedance.com in the article is dead. This is what I
| could find instead:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240907125001/https://www.baroq...
| kaz-inc wrote:
| Beautiful notation. I found the first especially interesting,
| with the spatial mapping recorded in a kind of "parametric-
| function on a 2d plane" view, like a camera on a slow exposure
| looking at the entire dance from bird's eye view.
|
| The later ones are reasonable, as they map more closely to the
| music notation that has become standard, but for classical music
| of different cultures, notes don't often lie on a single place,
| but swing from one pitch to another, with blips and arcs in their
| paths from one place to another.
|
| The staff-based notations lose the first-hand flow of the
| notation in space. I wonder what could be done with color.
| bobvanluijt wrote:
| Agreed, beautiful indeed
| toolslive wrote:
| There's also a notation for gymnastics (used by judges) An
| introduction: http://www.nawgj-sc.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/12/Gym-Short...
| borlox wrote:
| That's a bit more readable and reminds me of Aresti symbols as
| used in aerobatics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aresti_Catalog
| Wistar wrote:
| Ah, you beat me to it. Here is the current IAC catalog of
| Aresti.
|
| https://www.iac.org/aresti-catalogue-structure
| bj-rn wrote:
| made me think of https://motionbank.org
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| These choreography notation systems are very interesting from a
| historical perspective, but their raison d'etre went away with
| the advent of video.
|
| Dance (or at least ballet) is still largely passed down by oral
| tradition; dancers are coached by older generations who danced
| these pieces when they were younger (obviously not for new
| works). In fact, unlike in the music world, it's exceedingly rare
| to find anyone in the dance world who can read or understand any
| of these notation systems. They tend to be the purview of dance
| historians or those specifically tasked with coaching copyrighted
| works from dead choreographers. That is, even before video, they
| weren't really in widespread use like music notation was.
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| Choreographers have almost no means to copyright their creative
| work and the Choreographer's Guild presently seeks to protect
| said work and get choreographers credited and paid.
|
| It may be that notation has a renewed utility by virtue of
| creating a copyrightable artifact.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Choreographers have almost no means to copyright their
| creative work
|
| That's simply not true. In the US choreographic works have
| been explicitly copyrightable since 1976, and things like the
| Balanchine Trust have existed for over 40 years. Written
| notation is not necessary - a video is sufficient.
|
| What organizations like the Choreographer's Guild do is more
| change the _cultural_ expectations around dance copyright
| than the legal possibilities. That is, in the dance
| /entertainment world, often times a choreographer is hired
| for peanuts and is simply unaware of their legal rights
| around copyright. But when it comes to what is legally
| possible/necessary, there is no difference really between
| what, say, a photographer who is hired to do a photoshoot can
| do vs. a choreographer hired to produce a work of dance.
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| You appear to be in favour of said Guild trying to change
| the cultural expectation for _more_ copyrights, now
| extending to _human movement_. Needless to say this evokes
| the image of corporations like Disney ending up with those
| copyrights and going after people doing the zoomer dance
| long after the Mickey Mouse copyright will have expired.
| Are those worries warranted?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Not really, but then again anyone can basically argue the
| interpretation of anything in law. I would say that in
| many other professions creators have been paid for their
| works long after they've been created, but choreographers
| have basically been shafted for a long time, usually only
| being paid a daily or weekly rate for the original
| creation.
|
| I found this interesting article about a very well-known
| choreographer and his quest to copyright his works,
| including his famous "Single Ladies" choreography for
| Beyonce: https://www.billboard.com/music/music-
| news/jaquel-knight-bey.... The thing I find weird/ironic
| about this is that the Single Ladies choreography
| famously copies a _lot_ from Bob Fosse 's "Mexican
| Breakfast" (the article I linked talks about this in
| detail). While I personally agree with the quote from the
| article, "You see the three ladies, you see the
| inspiration -- but the funk, the stylized movement,
| they're extremely different. I mean, how I got here as an
| artist is being inspired by those who came before me", in
| terms of copyright law, I think there is _much_ more
| similarity between Mexican Breakfast and Single Ladies
| than there is between, say, the song Blurred Lines and
| Marvin Gaye 's Got to Give it Up, which Blurred Lines was
| found guilty of infringing.
|
| I also found it annoying that the article I linked stated
| "For a Black creator in an industry that has long
| appropriated Black culture..." but then goes on to argue
| that the amount of copying done from Mexican Breakfast is
| just "the creative process". To be clear, I think it _is_
| part of the creative process, but it 's annoying the
| author can see none of the hypocrisy about taking about
| "cultural appropriation" while then devoting paragraphs
| to how the copying of Mexican Breakfast is somehow
| totally different.
| Animats wrote:
| True. Labanotation is sometimes taught to dancers. A published
| report card for Madonna shows she got a D in that class. But
| choreographers do not compose in dance notation.
|
| Here's a decent explanation of Labanotation.[1] I once looked
| at it as a possible input language for an animation program.
| Bad idea.
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220501031730/https://www.dance...
| twunde wrote:
| Something adjacent is the Underscore dance's glyphs (
| https://globalunderscore.com/underscore-glyphs/ ) which describe
| the patterns/phases of contact improvisation
| retrac wrote:
| The only writing system for sign languages that has significant
| adoption ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SignWriting ) was
| developed not by a linguist like other systems had been, but by a
| dance instructor, who was inspired by such notation systems. It
| borrows many of the ideas about how to notate orientation and
| movement, and works somewhat like a phonetic alphabet. There is
| close transcription with every little join and variation
| precisely notated, and also a more abstract kind of transcription
| which assumes fluency where the reader can fill in the gaps.
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| I also immediately thought of Sutton SignWriting. (She also
| created a movement writing suite, including notation for insect
| movement.)
| yair99dd wrote:
| [1989] Merce Cunningham used a software called LifeForms[1]
| (later DanceForms) developed in colab with SFU researchers.
| producing over a dozen pieces including Ocean and BIPED[2]. its
| still online and used to have (~10years ago) the license key as
| plain text on the download page. i see its now ~200$...
|
| so he did the reverse, start with digital notation and move to
| flesh.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baBYHWI3wLY [2]
| https://www.sfu.ca/sfunews/stories/2019/11/sfu-software-key-...
| yair99dd wrote:
| also, this article misses a few notations and anecdotes.
|
| laban was commissioned in the 20s to use his method to optimize
| factory worker motion to increase early assembly-line
| productivity.
|
| bat-sheva, a fairly known dance group in the 90/00 uses Eshkol
| Wachman movement notation and employ a dedicated team of dance
| notation writers to write and teach it to new dancers. maybe im
| behind the times, but i still find this magic.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSHuhhO5VIU
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| I'm surprised that there's no mention of Sutton DanceWriting. I
| don't know how important it may or may not be in the world of
| dance notation (though I do know that Valerie Sutton worked with
| the Royal Danish Ballet, so it was used to some extent), but it's
| very important as the foundation of Sutton SignWriting, the only
| method of writing sign languages to have gained anything
| approaching widespread acceptance.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| I'm a little surprised there's no mention of marching band dot
| charts, though I guess that isn't "dance" per se. It's an
| interesting case because a lot of people are exposed to it in
| high school, and it can't really be supplanted by video the way
| that these dance notation methods can.
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