A sample of Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation.

Have you ever seen a score of a dance? Did you even know that there is such a thing as dance notation?

I always knew that music was written down in scores, and my study of music notation began the same day I picked up a violin for the first time. But I can’t remember at what point I learned that there are scores of dances, and I don’t think I saw any examples of dance notation until I was in college - more than twelve years after I started studying dance. Musicians read scores, actors read scripts, but we dancers do not typically read dance notation. Indeed, I only started to learn Labanotation when I entered the MFA program at Ohio State - sixteen years after I took my first dance class.

Whereas I began my study of Labanotation late in my training - and while most dancers in the U.S. never learn any notation system at all - many dancers in Israel are exposed to movement notation at an earlier point in their education. Developed in the 1950s by the Israeli Noa Eshkol along with Avraham Wachman, Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation (EWMN) is the most prevalent form of notation in Israel. Both the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and Seminar Hakibbutzim provide a rigorous background in EWMN for their students, who are studying to be dance teachers, and they in turn use EWMN with their younger pupils.

As someone interested in how notation systems aid in preserving and passing on our art form, I was intrigued by EWMN. All I knew at the beginning of my research was that EWMN could be used not only to document existing movement but to generate new dances (a major difference between EWMN and most forms of dance notation), and I wanted to find out more about how the system compared to Labanotation. The Jerusalem Academy’s Dafna Jones gave me an overview of EWMN and explained how popular it was with young students, showing me examples of EWMN used and even created by 5-year-olds. She also directed me to Michal Shoshani, who worked closely with Noa Eshkol until Eshkol’s death last autumn. Michal let me sit in on one of her classes at the Academy and then talked with me for a podcast, speaking passionately about Eshkol herself, the development of EWMN, the system’s principles, and her own interest in notation.

Intrigued? Hear my conversation with Michal Shoshani on Israel Seen.
(URL: http://israelseen.com/2008/08/27/deborah-friedes-interviews-michal-shoshani-about-eshkol-wachman-movement-notation/)

Want more resources on Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation? Check out these two sites:
-Directed by Tirza Sapir, Rikudnetto is a dance company in Israel which uses EWMN; its website includes information on the company and on EWMN.
-movementnotation.com has a wealth of information about EWMN as well as a discussion forum and an online course.

Also curious about Labanotation, the most common form of notation used in the U.S.? Try out Laban Lab, an interactive website which can walk you through the basics of Labanotation.