images 3 source: John Burrows

I found all images in this link on John Burrows website: http://sarma.be/oralsite/pages/Jonathan_Burrows_on_Scores/ I recommend you visit, a visual pleasure and treasure trove.

 (1) An eighteenth-century dance seen from above with music notation running across the top. The author of this dance, Kellom Tomlinson, wasn’t blind to the decorative appeal of the drawings, since he also sold them as “paper furniture for a Room or Closet … if put in Frames with Glasses.”

 (2) The “circuit-board” look of Labanotation changes little from dance to dance, but hides a wealth of detail about the time, weight, space and flow of movement. This is a transcription of an eighteenth-century dance similar to the one on the previous page, though it couldn’t look more different. Labanotation was developed in the 1920s and 30s.

 (3) A page from the notebook of choreographer Rosemary Butcher, showing preparatory time and space drawings for her 1999 piece scan. Rough notes like these help visualise texture and keep track of the process.  

 (4) A handwritten page of Benesh notation showing part of a dance for seven men from Kenneth Macmillan’s 1974 ballet Manon. The body is seen from behind with the head on the top line and the feet on the bottom. Sweeping curves graphically illustrate the flow of the movement.

 (5) A space plan for Merce Cunningham’s Summerspace, 1958. The drawing contains the idea for the whole piece: six dancers, six entrances, each dancer will make all 21 possilbe crossings of the space using 21 different kinds of movement phrasing. The order of events was derived from chance operations.

 (6) What Cunningham calls “space trajectories” for Summerspace. This drawing shows two different ways of getting from one entrance to another, not necessarily by the shortest possible route.

(7) A window from the animation software program Lifeforms developed in collaboration with Cunningham in the early 1990s. The figure is modelled into shapes stored in the shape library on the left. By placing two shapes on to the timeline at the bottom, the programme will animate the figure from one to the next. Figures can be dropped on to a stage and seen in three dimensions from any angle. Cunningham’s recent piece Biped, made using this software, can be seen at The Barbican, London, this October, along with Summerspace.

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8) and (9) Direction and duration charts of a complex Merce Cunningham piece Suite by Chance, choreographed in 1953. This was the first dance piece he made where everythig was decided by chance, and coincided with the early use of chance methods by composer John Caage (also Cunningham’s companion and collaborator). A coin was thrown to determine what move, where, in which direction, for how long and with whom.

(10) and (11). Two windows from Improvisation Technologies, a CD-ROM by American choreographer William Forsythe. The user navigates their way around a series of different methods of generating movement. Technology has allowed the makers to be drawn in lines of motion, articulating the hidden architecture of the dance. These windows show two parts of a section called “dropping curves”, which show the simultaneous circing and falling of the body in space.

(12) In 1997 the French choreographer Daniel Larrieu invited William Forsythe to make a new piece for his company. Forsythe was too busy, so his solution was to make a dance communicated entirely by fax, and translated into movement by the dancers themselves. Hypothetical Stream is derived from a series of Tiepolo pereparatory drawings over which a hieroglyphic of lines and numbers has been scribbled. Dancers love to work with this kind of freedom.

(13) This is a score sent by Daniel Larrieu to Jonathan Burrows (the author of this article) who used it to make two dances, Rewriting and Singing, in 1999. The basic computer font Wingdings is used as a map, with instructions and choices as to how to proceed from A to B.

(14) Version two of the score of Hands, a film made by Jonathan Burrows, Matteo Fargeon and Adam Roberts in 1994. The idea was for a hand dance that a musician would sight-read live on camera, retaining the hesitation and doubt caused by not knowing what might come next.

(15)-(19) Five stills from the completed film of Hands.

(20) A floor plan from In Real Time made by Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker earlier this year. These shapes were taped out on the studio floor and used to create complex space patterns.

Credits of pictures

(1) Example of notation by Kellom Tomlinson from A Work Book by Kellom Tomlinson published by Pendragon Press, 1990.

(2) Example of Labanotation by Mireille Backer from Wendy Hilton’s book Dance of Court and Theatre published by Dance Books Ltd, 1981.

(4). Extract from “The Beggars Dance” from Manon Act I, Choreography (c) Kenneth MacMillan, London, 1974. Benesh Movement Notation (c) Rudolf Benesh, London 1955.

(5), (6), (8) and (9) Extracts from Merce Cunningham’s notebooks published in The Dancers and The Dance, Merce Cunningham in conversation with Jacqueline Lesschaeve, published by Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd., 1980. English verion, 1985.

(7) Window from Lifeforms software published in Macromind Paracomp Inc., first edition, 1992.

(10) and (11) Windows from William Forsythe: Improvisation Technologies, a CD-ROM published by Zentrum Für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, 1999.

With thanks to Rosemary Butcher, Katie Duck, William Forsythe, Anne Theresa De Keersmaeker, Daniel Larrieu and Russell Maliphant.