A Computerized Editor of Benesh Movement Notation

Abstract

Notation plays a very important role in today's society. It acts as a communication medium between inventors and those who will implement their ideas. Without notation our knowledge of the past and present would be limited by our memory and prone to errors in oral transmission. Although we take for granted the existence of a suitable notation in almost all fields of human study, this is not true in the field of human movement. For example, in Western theatrical dance, no adequate means to record masterpieces existed until the twentieth century and thus most works from the past have been lost. In response to the literacy problem in dance, a number of systems have been developed in the past five centuries to record human movement, but most of these have failed to be practical under rigorous working conditions. Only a few have attracted substantial professional interest. The difficulty is that a dance notation must capture on paper a precise record, at each moment in time, of the position of each body part in three dimensions of space, as well as provide comprehensive information about movement dynamics and choreographic intention.

Time Motion and Video Analysis of Classical Ballet and Contemporary Dance Performance

“…These methodologies have been shown to be valid and reliable observational analyses tools and have revolutionised both the technical and physiological preparation of sportspeople [6,15,27] . Observational analysis of dance has largely been based upon examining choreographic elements from an artistic point of view using techniques such as Benesh [34] and Labanotation [21] . These techniques provide vital aesthetic and technical information that can be used for enhancing dance repertoires.…”

Humanoid Robotic Language and Virtual Reality Simulation

“…EW can be applied on linkage systems other than human body. Computers are now used to aid the interpretation and visualization of these notations (Ryman et al, 1984;Adamson, 1987;Calvert et al, 1993;Schiphorst, 1992). Researchers used Labanotation as a basis to represent human motion, proposed to extract key motion primitives, and proposed architectures for digital representation of human movements (Badler et al, 1979).…”

Toward a language for human movement

“…As an aid in the composition and editing of the movement notation score (Weber et al, 1978; and as an interpreter which can animate a score and thus assist in learning (Calvert et al, 1978;Badler et al, 1979;Smoliar et al, 1977), the digital computer has been utilized in various ways. A computer-based editor for Benesh Notation is under development at the University of Waterloo (Ryman, Beatty, Booth and Singh, 1983) and a similar editor for Labanotation scores was developed by the group at the University of Pennsylvania (Smoliar and Weber, 1977). A rather different approach has been taken in Australia, where a computer based-Benesh Movement Language was developed at the University of Sydney (Herbison-Evans, 1979).…”