Action stroke dance notation
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Action Stroke Dance Notation is a form of dance notation invented by Iver Cooper. Designed for speed of writing the notation is primarily formed of action strokes that represent one of three basic actions:
- a support gesture which takes weight (hop, step, etc )
- a touch gesture (makes contacts without taking weight)
- an air gesture (makes no contact)
the score has five sections:
- General section - describing the general movement of the dancer
- leg section (or staff) - indicating movement of the legs and feet
- arm section (or staff) - indicating movement of the arms and hands
- trunk section - indicating movement of head, neck, chest and pelvis
- notes section - detailed explanations of the movement
based on the work of Rudolf Laban and Labanotation the score read from bottom to top. The horizontal dimension of the score represents the symmetry of the body, and the vertical dimension the time dimension. Making use of abstract symbols Action Stroke Dance Notation is visually similar to Motif notation, a subset of Labannotation that is also designed for speed of writing.
