Illustration from the Codex Manesse (a medieval songbook),
c.1304-40
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
|
The large measure of the basse dance must begin
and proceed with a reverence, then with a bransle, then with two simple steps
and with one double, then with two simple steps as before, and then with a
riprise and a bransle.
(From S'ensuyvent Plusieurs Basses Dances
Tant Communes Que Incommunes, a treatise on the Burgundian style of basse
dance published by Jacques Moderne in 1532/33. Translation by Geoffrey Mathias
for an article in Vol. 2 of the ‘Letter of Dance’.)
The 15th-16th
century Burgundian dance described in the text above would most probably be pretty
straightforward to pick up if someone showed
you how to do it. Unfortunately, of course, no one from that time has been able
to hang around long enough to provide the demonstration for us, and the artwork
of the period doesn’t, sadly, include step-by-step sequences. Terms that were
obvious in their meaning to the writer are no longer so for us, and as for the
details of bearing and style, the use of hands and head, etc. – well, as you
can gather, frequently no attempt whatever was made to describe them. Although
wonderful detailed research is now carried out by dance reconstruction experts,
and fascinating approximations are achieved, the fact remains that fully accurate
reconstructions of movement are impossible to create from instructions that
were, in essence, just an aide-memoire for an audience already well-tutored in
the type of dance described.
Words, after all, are not the medium through which
dance is taught. Dance teachers do a lot of talking, of course – clarifying,
explaining, giving musical counts and corrections and pointing out features of
movements they are demonstrating – but their principal method of instruction in
the first instance is to show the
pupil what is required.
Click here,
and you’ll see a photograph of the choreographer Christopher Wheeldon in
rehearsal with the San Francisco Ballet. If, instead of standing as shown in
the photo, he’d said to the dancers: I
want you to stand on your right leg facing the left diagonal but with your
torso turned to the front, your left leg raised in attitude, your supporting
knee bent, your arms raised parallel to one another, elbows bent at
approximately right angles but with your forearms sloping a little upwards from
your shoulders, your hands relaxed, just above head height… the dancers
would, I think, have spent considerable time struggling to follow the instructions – or
would’ve fallen asleep. Instead, he can simply demonstrate and say: “Do this.”
That’s fine
when Wheeldon – or any individual choreographer or teacher – is present. But
what if he or she isn’t there? Indeed what if the crucial person is, not merely
on the other side of the world teaching his/her ballet to other dancers, but gone
more permanently: what if s/he is dead? How can dance survive, be it a
Burgundian court dance or a full-length theatrical performance, when writing it
down in words is either inadequate or incredibly laboured (or both)? Can it be
captured and preserved in any other way?
Before film
and videotape came on the scene (as well as afterwards – but more of that later),
the answer was sought through notation: the use of symbols, rather than words
(just as symbols are used in musical notation). Indeed, over several centuries,
many different attempts were made to create systems of notation for dance.
Although codes using letter abbreviations go back at least as far as the 15th
century, the first known attempt at creating a fuller system of symbols came
when Choreography, or the Art of Describing Dance was published in Paris in
1700, with Raoul Feuillet credited as the author, although (as my Encyclopedia of Dance and Ballet tells
me) the credit almost certainly should
have gone instead to the dancer and choreographer Pierre Beauchamp.
The Beauchamp-Feuillet system showed the paths the dancers
should trace across the floor, and onto those path-lines were added symbols that
indicated, for example, the direction of a step, or a turn, or a beaten step. A
significant number of people must have learned to read this notation, because I
understand that it was widely used throughout Europe during the following
century, especially to record social dances popular among the wealthier
classes. After the French Revolution, however, it fell out of use.
Systems based on stick figures – an obvious tactic! – were
developed during the 19th century in France by the dancer,
choreographer and musician Arthur Saint-Léon, and in Ukraine by a dancing
master called Friedrich Albert Zorn. Here is an example of Zorn’s system:
Even the untutored eye can see that there’s a fair amount of
detail here – more than you’d get, say, from the footprint dance instructions
beloved of many 20th century ballroom dance manuals – but still, the system is crude,
and relies on the reader knowing a great deal about the required style without
being told. We are still in the realms of the aide-memoire, albeit a
sophisticated version – and, indeed, if the notation was only ever intended to
be read by contemporaries in the know (dancing masters familiar with the dance
fashions of the day, for example), there was no need to go further. The loss of
detail is only regretted now, by
anyone who is interested in the history of dance – but the notator of the time
was not creating the score for us.
Within the
world of ballet, however, the requirements around preservation and communication
have become profoundly different. Maintaining the traditional versions of the
classics – e.g. Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Giselle or The Nutcracker – is deemed
very important, as is giving newer works longevity. Until well into the
twentieth century, most ballets survived only by being handed down from one
generation of dancers to another. Although this is hugely valuable (and today’s
dancers always seek, if possible, coaching from dancers who have previously
performed a great role), memory is not perfect, steps inevitably develop
personal embellishments or simplifications… and so things can and do morph on the way,
rather like a game of what was known in my childhood (is it still?) as ‘Chinese
Whispers’. And therefore, while we have the texts of plays from the 19th
century and the scores of operas, we cannot truly say with confidence at so
many generations’ remove that we have anything more than an approximation of
the ballets.
Some of the
classic productions were brought out of Russia in 1918, however, by Nicholas
Sergeyev, thanks to a system of notation developed in St Petersburg by dancer
Vladimir Stepanov (and published in his 1892 book Alphabet of Movements of the
Human Body). Sergeyev used his precious notation notebooks to stage the same
ballets for Ninette de Valois’s Sadler’s Wells company in the 1930s. Three
decades later there was confirmation of the accuracy of the notation (at least
when working in conjunction with Sergeyev’s memory!), for when the Royal Ballet
took its production of Sleeping Beauty to Leningrad in 1961, it was recognized
by Russian audiences immediately.
Extract from La Bayadère, choreography by Marius Petipa – Stepanov notation, c. 1900
by
Mrlopez2681 (commons) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
|
But by that
year – 1961 – two newer systems of notation had already begun to transform the
way that ballets were recorded in the West and had made possible at last the
preservation of works in detail, with
the choreographer’s original intentions faithfully recorded even as the work
was being created in the rehearsal studio. In the 1920s the Hungarian Rudolf
von Laban developed a system that was to become known as Labanotation. And in
the 1940s and '50s, Rudolf and Joan Benesh, a mathematician and Sadler’s Wells
dancer respectively, together developed Benesh Movement Notation. Nowadays, as
many dance companies as can afford it have a notator on the payroll. The Royal
Ballet, for example, has been using the Benesh system since the 1950s. (And after
training as a Benesh notator myself some years ago, I worked with them in that
for capacity for three years.)
An example of Labanotation
by Huster
(Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
|
Labanotation,
as you can see above, is written on a vertical stave. Benesh, on the other
hand, is written on a normal musical stave, in which the bar lines correspond
to the bar lines in the musical score.
Benesh Movement Notation
copyright Rudolf
Benesh, London 1955
|
Each system
has its advocates, of course, but unfortunately I cannot go into any detail
about Labanotation because I am not trained in it. I can say, however, that the
period I spent learning and working with the language of Benesh Notation was
one of the most fascinating experiences of my life. It is a vastly flexible and
subtle language, capable of recording all forms of human movement from the
grandest classical jeté to the smallest wiggling of a
finger. It can record any number of dancers on stage together, and their
relation to one another as well as their individual movements. Equally, it
could record the posture you are sitting (or standing or lying) in as you read
this article.
Sir Kenneth MacMillan - one of the greatest choreographers of the 20th century - was a fan of Benesh Notation, and worked closely with a notator, Monica Parker, for many years. He said: "I am amazed when ballets are recreated without my being there. There it is in front of me from a piece of paper. My original intention of movement is absolutely caught every time by Benesh Notation."
But why –
you might say – don’t ballet companies just video their work? The answer is that all
companies – The Royal Ballet included – use video as well as notation. The two
form a useful partnership. But trying to learn an entire ballet from a video
would be akin to trying to learn a symphony by listening to a recording. Not
only would it be a monumentally slow task, but you would have to guess at the
counts, trust that no one made a mistake on the day of filming, and you would
be unable to distinguish reliably between choreographed detail and the
interpretive style of an individual dancer. Not to mention the fact that, with
a full stage or studio, it would be difficult for the camera to catch every
detail of each person’s movement. A notation score, however, contains all this
information; former director of The Royal Ballet (and great dancer) Sir Anthony Dowell has said that the use of BMN "cuts down the
rehearsal time by half".
That
doesn’t happen, however, by handing the dancers a sheet – or a heavy file – of notation.
Most dancers can read little if any notation, and the notator can easily feel
rather like a medieval scribe: the only person around who can understand the
mysterious scribbles on the page! Instead the notator’s job – if a work is
being recreated from a notation score – is to learn everyone’s steps and teach
them by showing them. Whatever the
developments in notation methods, the importance of showing above telling in
dance instruction has not changed.
If you want
to see a notator in action (teaching, rather than writing notation), click here for an
example of a rehearsal taken by the Royal Ballet’s Principal Notator, the
hugely knowledgeable and utterly fantastic Grant Coyle, working alongside
Dame Monica Mason in coaching the dancer Marianela Nunez. Note how Grant
focuses minutely on the counting and movements, how Dame Monica consults him on
details – and spot his notation score, lying open on the music stand beside
him!
The international centre for Benesh Movement Notation is the Benesh Institute in London. For more information, click here.
H.M. Castor has written several books about ballet, but rather more about history. Her latest, VIII, is a novel about Henry VIII, and is published by Templar in the UK, Penguin in Australia, and will be published by Simon & Schuster in the US later this year.
H.M. Castor's website is here.
6 comments:
The more posts like this you write about the ballet, the happier I will be.Fascinating throughout! I wish I'd had it when I was writing my ballet novel...maybe I will write ANOTHER one!
That was GREAT! Thank you so much - and that clip of the rehearsal was riveting!
Off you go, Adele - I'd read it in a flash!
Thank you both for your lovely comments!
Fab Harriet, thank you. I didn't realise that notation could capture so much so accurately!
Utterly fascinating!
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