Labanotation

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A symbolic system of written signs used to record the positions, directions and movements of dancers in a choreographed dance
2. A graphic notation method that captures the body movements of dance performances through a set of standardized symbols on a staff
3. The formal script of symbols devised to document choreography, showing how each limb and part of the body moves through time

Etymology: Labanotation is a system for recording human movement on paper, and its name is a blend of two parts: the surname of Rudolf Laban, the Hungarian-born dance theorist whose work it grew from, and "notation," the general term for any written system of symbols. Laban developed the method in the 1920s and 1930s, when he was working to make dance movement as precisely recordable as music, which had been written down in staff notation for centuries. The result is a grid-like score read from bottom to top, in which symbols placed on a vertical staff show the direction, level, body part and duration of each movement. Because the name fuses a person's surname with a common word, it works like other eponymous coinages, naming a technique after its inventor while describing what it does. Laban's own name is the only element that identifies it as his creation.

Synonyms: kinetography