On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 4:50 AM, Whitney Quesenbery <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Labanotation is an interesting notation system for dance, as it > documents not just movement in space, but also the "shape" of the > effort. It's incredibly detailed. Here's an example from the Dance > Notation Bureau -http://www.dancenotation.org/lnbasics/frame0.html > > Old ghost time: in an earlier career as a dance accompanist I worked with several teachers and choreographers who were trained and certified in Labanotation and the related effort-shape exercises. My observation was that the notation was excruciating, both to create and even more so to interpret. One resuscitation from notation of an early modern dance piece took weeks of trial and error. The notation didn't seem to catch on much with the dance students - I don't remember that any of them went on to Laban certification school. The related effort-shape exercises were absorbed by everyone though. They were designed to get the body moving in 3D space, along diagonals, in specific ways. I still do some at the gym to cool down and stretch. The exercises related well to everyone in the class (even the musician!), so we learned them. The notation was interesting in a remote sort of way, but a bit too peripheral to the exhausting experience of training to be a dancer to really catch fire. I later created several scores for pieces in collaboration with choreographers certified in Labanotation and didn't see it get used much in the real-world chaos of setting a piece on dancers. I dread the day something as intellectually rigorous and challenging as Labanotation is head-nodded all around for documenting system interactions. That evolutionary branch of IxD will dead-end as an academic backwater, much as Labanotation has in the dance community. The rest of us will move along and design stuff. Michael Micheletti ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
