Home Forums Blogs Articles Photos Videos Contact FAQ

Dance - Choreography and notation

Dance - Choreography and notation: Encyclopedia II - Dance - Choreography and notation

Main articles: Choreography, Dance notation Choreography is the art of making dances and the generic name given to predetermined sequences of dance movement. People who choreograph are called choreographers and may develop their own dance techniques as a part of their choreographic work. Choreography and dance techniques can be written down as dance notation which is analogous to music notation. The term choreogoraphy has a varied historical context; it is derived from the word chorea. Chorea (χορεία), a Gre ...

Dance: Encyclopedia II - Dance - Choreography and notation

Dance - Choreography and notation

Main articles: Choreography, Dance notation

Choreography is the art of making dances and the generic name given to predetermined sequences of dance movement. People who choreograph are called choreographers and may develop their own dance techniques as a part of their choreographic work. Choreography and dance techniques can be written down as dance notation which is analogous to music notation.

The term choreogoraphy has a varied historical context; it is derived from the word chorea. Chorea (χορεία), a Greek Circle dance accompanied by singing, derivatives of chorea are used to describe circle dances in other counties: Khorovod (Russia), Hora (Romania, Moldova, Israel), Horo (Bulgaria). Paracelsus used the term chorea to describe the rapid, jerking physical movements of medieval pilgrims traveling the healing shrine of St. Vitus giving rise to the term St. Vitus' dance. Dance for years has been a gateway for expression and visual entertainment.

Raoul Auger Feuillet and Pierre Beauchamp (who are also said to have developed and recorded the five common feet positions in ballet) reused an adaption of the word chorea to describe dance notation. Feuillet's Chorégraphie (1700) set out a method of dance notation and established the term chorégraphie for the writing, or notating of dances. Thus a person who wrote down dances was a choreographer, but the creator of dances was still known as a dancing master (Le maître à danser) or in later years a ballet master.

Rudolf Laban extended the meaning and use of the word choreographie with his book Choreographie (1926) in which he detailed not only a new form of dance notation but also the principles and theory of a complete system of dance that would later become Laban Movement Analysis (LMA). Rudolf and Joan Benesh coined the term choreology to describe the aesthetic and scientific study of all forms of human movement by movement notation (1955) whilst Laban used the term choreutics to describe LMA.

The rejection of ballet vocabulary and terms by modern dance resulted in the term choreographer replacing Ballet Master and therefore choreography came to mean the art of making dances.

Other related archives

1700, 1920s, 1926, 1955, 200 BC, 20th century, 20th century concert dance, Academic degrees, An American Ballroom Companion, Anthropology, Area studies, BA (Hons), Ballroom dance, Baroque dance, Baroque music, Bulgaria, Category:Musical genres, Ceremonial dance, Chorea, Choreography, Circle dance, Classical ballet, Classical music, Competitive dance, Concert dance, Cultural Studies, Dance notation, Dance-Movement Therapy, Disco, Electronica, Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, Ethnography, Eurhythmics, Folk dance, Frankish, Gender Studies, Greek, Hip-Hop, History of dance, Israel, Jig, Laban Movement Analysis, List of dance style categories, List of dance wikibooks, List of dances, Marie Rambert, Martial arts, Modern dance, Moldova, Old French, Orchesography, Paracelsus, Participation dance, Performance dance, PhD, Postcolonial theory, Postmodern dance, Raoul Auger Feuillet, Romania, Rudolf Laban, Rudolf and Joan Benesh, Russia, Salsa, Social dance, Somatic, St. Vitus, St. Vitus' dance, Tango, Traditional dance, Waltz, Wikipedia:Dance basic topics, Wikipedia:WikiProject Dance, academic discipline, aesthetic, analogous, analysis, animals, archeological, artistic, arts, ballet, bee dance, body language, celebrations, ceremonial, ceremony, chorea, choreographers, choreography, critical theory, cultural, dance notation, dancers, entertainment, ethnic, expression, figure skating, genres, gymnastics, historical, history, human, humanities, humans, kata, knowledge, leaves, medieval, modern dance, moral, motion, movement, music, music notation, musical forms, musical genre, new media, non-verbal communication, performance, pilgrims, postdoctoral, practice, prehistoric, prehistoric times, professional, rhythm, rituals, scholars, shrine, social, sound, spiritual, sports, symbiotic, synchronized swimming, tap dance, technologies, traditional, universities, virtuoso, wind

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Choreography and notation", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

More material related to Dance can be found here:

Main Page
for
Dance Index of Articles
related to
Dance Glossary
related to
Dance Dream Dictionary
related to
Dance