IMPORTANT NOTICE TO ALL BENESH NOTATORS:
Copyright notices – revised code of practice

The Benesh Institute advises that in future all Benesh Movement Notation scores should carry the following three notices. Failure to observe this code of practice may compromise the legal rights of both choreographer and score owner. 

1. Choreography © choreographer place date
Place: city of first performance of the work
Date: year of first performance of the work
The © symbol may be replaced by the word ‘copyright’

2. Score owner: as applicable

3. All rights reserved.
This can be expanded to include:
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the choreographer and the score owner.


Additional information that it would be advisable to include (as applicable):

4. Notated in Benesh Movement Notation™/ Notated using the Benesh Notation Editor ™ by notator place date

Place: city/country where the score was written
Date: year in which the score was written
Benesh Movement Notation™ and Benesh Notation Editor™ are trademarks of the Royal Academy of Dance incorporating The Benesh Institute. These should be used in place of Benesh Movement Notation © Rudolf Benesh London 1955.

5. Score registered with Royal Academy of Dance® Philip Richardson Library
Available for: Supervised viewing/Educational Use

Royal Academy of Dance® is a registered trademark of the Royal Academy of Dance.

We further recommend that Notators inform the choreographer’s with whom they work that, in order to enjoy statutory provisions for damages in America, they are advised to deposit tangible fixations of their works (e.g. a BMN score) in the copyright office of the Library of Congress.

Score identification, recommended practice:

It is important that the provenance of a score, or score extract, be readily identifiable. This is particularly relevant where selected pages of notation may be photocopied and thus risk becoming detached from the score’s title and credits pages. In order to establish the provenance of a score it is necessary to know the name of the work, the choreographer, the notator and the date of the production.

For these reasons we recommend that in addition to the title and credits pages, every page of notation in a score should carry:

  • The choreographic copyright notice (1 above)
  • The notice identifying the notator and date of the score (4 above)
  • The name of the choreographic work and, where relevant, the name used for that dance and details about its placement within the whole: Act No., Scene No. etc.

Where this is impractical, this information should appear at the beginning of each new score section, i.e. at the beginning of each dance, pas de deux, solo, pas de trios etc. This applies whether or not the new score section commences at the start of a new page.

back to top

close window