Action Stroke Dance Notation is a form of dance notation

Dance notation

Dance notation is the symbolic representation of dance movement. It is analogous to movement notation but can be limited to representing human movement and specific forms of dance such as Tap dance...

 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
  Gesture
  A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of speech or together and in parallel with spoken words. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or other parts of the body...
  
   which takes weight
  Weight
  In science and engineering, the weight of an object is the force on the object due to gravity. Its magnitude , often denoted by an italic letter W, is the product of the mass m of the object and the magnitude of the local gravitational acceleration g; thus:...
  
   (hop, step, etc )
• a touch gesture (makes contacts without taking weight)
• an air gesture (makes no contact)

the score has five sections:

1. General section - describing the general movement of the dancer
2. leg section (or staff) - indicating movement of the legs and feet
3. arm section (or staff) - indicating movement of the arms and hands
4. trunk section - indicating movement of head, neck, chest and pelvis
5. notes section - detailed explanations of the movement

based on the work of Rudolf Laban

Rudolf Laban

Rudolf von Laban aka Rudolf Laban was a dance artist and theorist whose work laid the foundations for Laban Movement Analysis and other more specific developments in dance notation...

 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.

External links

• Action Stroke Dance Notation (Archived 2009-10-24)