Dance Score Research Articles

Louis Horst, musician in a dancer's world

From his musical beginnings as a piano player in gambling houses and society cafes, Louis Horst (1884-1964) became one of the chief architects of modern dance in the twentieth century. How a musician untrained in dance came to make such a mark is told here for the first time in rich detail. At the center of this story is Horst's relationship with Martha Graham, who was his intimate for decades. did everything for Martha, Horst said late in life. Indeed, as her lover, ally, and lifelong confidante, he worked with such conviction to make her the undisputed dance leader in the concert world that Graham herself would later remark: Without him I could not have achieved anything I have done. Drawing on the conversation and writings of Horst and his colleagues, Janet Mansfield Soares reveals the inner workings of this passionate commitment and places it firmly in the context of dance history. Horst emerges from these pages as a man of extraordinary personality and multifaceted talent: a composer whose dance scores, such as the one for Graham's Primitive Mysteries, became models for many who followed; a concert pianist for American dancers such as Doris Humphrey and Helen Tamiris, as well as their German counterparts; an editor and writer whose advocacy for American dance made him a leading critic of his time; and, above all, a teacher and mentor whose work at the Neighborhood Playhouse, the Bennington School of Dance, American Dance Festival, and Juilliard helped shape generations of dancers and choreographers. Richly illustrated, sensitive to intimate detail and historical nuance, this comprehensive biography reveals the raison d'etre underlying Horst's theories and practices, offering a wealth of insight into the development of dance as an art form under his virtually unchallenged rule.

Videodance — Technology — Attitude Shift

In the late Sixties, Nam June Paik, one of the creators of videoart, expressed his concern that “it is about time we make the distinction between video art and video taped art.” Looking at TV and video dance of the Seventies and early Eighties one feels compelled to agree with Paik, realizing that a distinction must finally be made between video dance and video taped dance. Even when given the opportunity to create a work for video, rather than adapt a proscenium piece, choreographers frequently continue composing dances from a theatrical point of view which are then more or less successfully captured by the media. In other words, instead of creating videodance — a blending of structural and perceptual elements intrinsic to dance and the media — makers unintentionally slip into the genre of video translations of existing works or of videodocumentation. It appears that this state of affairs is chiefly due to two factors. Dancers and choreographers, on the one hand, do not always seek opportunities for hands-on experiences in a television studio or even with portable video equipment (other than shooting a record tape in place of a dance score). Such a practice does not allow for an understanding of the nature of the medium and excludes a creative integration of its expressive potentials. The number of media artists, on the other hand, who are familiar with the nature of dance is small. Independent artists, such as Charles Atlas, Doris Chase, and Jeff Bush or TV directors Fred Barzyk and Rick Hauser, are a minority, and individual dance/performance/media artists, such as Birgit Cullberg, Amy Greenfield, and Elaine Summers are still exceptions.

A system for the representation of human body movement from dance scores

An image processing and computer graphics system for generating graphical representation of human body movement from Labanotation dance score is described.

A graphics editor for benesh movement notation

This paper describes an interactive computerized editor for Benesh Movement Notation that aids in the preparation of dance scores on a medium resolution colour display. Benesh Movement Notation is a two-dimensional system for recording human movement in three dimensions of space which has been successfully used in the preparation of scores for a wide repertoire of dances. The preparation and revision of Benesh scores is a lengthy and error-prone process which interactive editing techniques can greatly facilitate. We describe the current state and future extensions of a prototype editing system in which all user interaction is based on a menu-driven scheme using a graphics tablet. Extensive visual cues including iconic trackers and semantic information are provided at all times. Both user and system initiated dialogues are supported. This system has served as a testbed for a variety of man-machine interaction studies, allowing us to transfer the wealth of experience with interactive text editing to a related task: the preparation of dance scores. The project has given us a better understanding of the issues involved in implementing an effective user-interface.

Two versions ofBarabau

Since its first performance by the Diaghilev Ballets Russes in 1925, Vittorio Rieti's witty score for Barabau has inspired a number of versions of this comic ballet. But the two most important ones were both presented in London: the original production by George Balanchine and one eleven years later choreographed by Ninette da Valois. Diaghilev introduced Balanchine to Rieti in 1925. Over the years, the choreographer was eventually to use six of the musician's scores, for Barabau, 1925; Le Bal, 1929; Waltz Academy, 1944; Night Shadow, 1946; The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne, 1948; and Native Dancers, 1959. Of these productions, the first two were created under the auspices of Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. Barabau was Balanchine's first ballet to an original dance score for that company. However, the music was not commissioned by the impresario but was conceived by the composer prior to any contact with the Ballets Russes.1 Rieti based the original version of the composition, a short a capplla choral number, on a Tuscan folk melody, using an Italian nursery rhyme as its text: 2