Dance Notation vs Graphic Notation
舞踊譜 / 図形楽譜
Both sit in Notation Systems, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Dance Notation
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A lineage of attempts to fix bodily movement on paper, from Feuillet's Baroque dance scores to Labanotation. Laban's vertical staff folds weight, direction and time into a single column, an alphabet of movement.
Graphic Notation
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The scores Cage and Cardew drew when they abandoned the staff: shapes, lines, map-like pages. Opening performance to interpretation rather than instruction, the score itself became visual art.
| Dance Notation | Graphic Notation | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1700– / 1928 Laban | 1950s– |
| Family | Notation Systems | Notation Systems |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Time climbing a vertical staff / Columns of direction symbols / Body parts as columns / Trajectory abstracted | The staff abandoned / Instruction by shape and line / Pages open to interpretation / The score as artwork |
| Best used for | Recording choreography so it can be revived without the original cast · Analyzing movement in comparable symbols rather than on video | Handing improvisers a map instead of a list of instructions · Making the page of a piece into a figure worth hanging on a wall |
| Type | Direction in symbol shape, level in shading, sizes held constant | Few kinds of sign, with the range where one shape holds one meaning |
| Composition | Time climbs from the bottom, one column for each body part | Show which direction on the page carries time before anyone plays |
| Material | Symbol length equals duration, so run a beat scale down the edge | Line weight mapped to loudness, kept dark enough to print clean |
| Caution | Bending symbol length to capture how a move feels makes duration unreadable, and the revival comes out as a different dance. | Freedom claimed without a key or any agreed convention scatters interpretation across players, and the score gets treated as a doodle. |