July 2006 nesh

Eduard Greyling FI Chor Award
It is with great pleasure that we announce that Eduard Greyling has been made a Fellow of the Benesh Institute (formerly the Institute of Choreology) in recognition of his tireless work in teaching Benesh notation at the University of Cape Town and for his pioneering work on recording African Dance. Prior to becoming a notator Eduard had a distinguished career as a dancer mainly with CAPAB Ballet where he formed a now legendary partnership with Phyllis Spira.

The FI Chor. is the highest award given by the Royal Academy of Dance (incorporating The Benesh Institute) in recognition of outstanding and exceptional service rendered over a substantial period of time to The Benesh Institute and Benesh Movement Notation.

Photograph by: Gus Stewart

The windy picnic!
The rain held off and the sun came out for the inaugural Benesh picnic in London’s Marble Hill Park on Sunday 9th July 2006. An international gathering of old, new and aspiring notators and their families relaxed on the grass, swapped gossip with old friends, made new ones, and shared quantities of delicious of food and drink, (including Liz’s famous brownies!). The occasion was also an opportunity to announce the granting of a Fellowship of the Institute of Choreology to Eduard Greyling (back row 4th from R).

Ann Whitley – July 2006
Ann Whitley FI Chor is mentioned in the July issue of Dancing Times in relation to her work on Turandot at the Royal Opera House (‘Making a Song and Dance – Noel Goodwin on dance in opera that is integral, not incidental’) and featured in the August issue of the Dalesman where she talks about her work as a choreologist and as a dry stone waller.

Dance Teacher magazine – June 2006
The June 2006 issue of Dance Teacher magazine carried a two page spread marking the addition of Distance Learning Course One in Benesh Movement Notation to its list of recognised professional development courses (see www.dance-teacher.com). We hope that this will encourage more dance teachers in America to dip into Benesh and discover how valuable it can be to them. A huge thank you to Lena Cederwall Broberg, Lynne Reucroft Croome and Leslie Young for their inspiring endorsements carried in the article.

>May 2006

Benesh Review Update
We would like to thank all those of you who contributed to the recent Benesh Review, prepared by Derek Purnell. Derek could not speak to everyone, for which we apologise, but the views of those he did contact have proved extremely valuable in getting a feel for the state of BMN in the world today. The Review has been received with great enthusiasm by the RAD, and plans are afoot to act on Derek's recommendations for the strengthening of BMN where it is already established, and for initiatives in new areas. An executive summary of the report is being prepared, and this will appear shortly on the website.

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Look out for more articles featuring Benesh in the next issue of Dance Gazette due out at the end of this month.

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Big Dance – 16th July 2006
Check out www.rad.org.uk/RADBigDance for information about ‘BIG Dance’ on 16th July. Benesh will be participating in all sorts of fun activities and you are all welcome to come along and join in.

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First full three act dance work recorded on the Benesh Notation Editor:
Daniele Lévêque and Irene Tan have recently completed their score of the 2005 Paris Opera production of Nureyev’s Cinderella commissioned by the Nureyev Foundation. Dany notated the principal roles and Irene the group dances. A section of the score was on exhibition at the recent Nureyev Exhibition (26th January - 9th April 2006) hosted by the Conservatoire de Paris.

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Could we make a plea for all notators to make the effort to lodge scores, even if only extracts, working scores etc., for the reasons that we are all aware of: safe-keeping, to provide a growing resource for notators, scholars etc, and not least, to come and visit Liz and Diana!

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Maria Fay’s Character Syllabus

Fiona Cater (DPBMN 2005) is continuing work originally undertaken in the 1960’s by Melvina Bura by attending Maria Fay’s Character Dance classes at the Royal Ballet School in order to notate Maria’s Character syllabus. Maria is currently writing a book on Character Dance, which we hope will include Fiona’s notation.

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Elizabeth Sullivan (DPBMN 2005) has notated the dance element of the recent English National Opera production of Madame Butterfly, and was invited to help re-stage the dances in Lithuania. Click here to read her report: Madame Butterfly in Lithuania

Robyn Hughes Ryman has been accepted onto the Master's Degree Programme at Canada’s York University to study Movement Analysis and Reconstruction.

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March 2006
Madame Butterfly in Lithuania
Report by Elizabeth Sullivan

Recently I had the opportunity to assist with the restaging of Anthony Minghella’s production of Madam Butterfly for the Lithuanian National Opera. I worked on the original production in the autumn of 2005 and have since been writing up the master score. Going to Lithuania was an excellent experience and I was very excited to be able to put my score to use. I went with a fantastic team of people who worked on the original production, including the choreographer, Carolyn Choa, her assistant, a staff director, two dancers and two puppeteers.

As I was only there for the first week of rehearsals, my main job as choreologist was to work through the opera with just the twelve dancers/puppeteers. We did six marathon sessions over two days so that when the two casts of singers started rehearsing with the dancers later in the week, the dancers would already know what they needed to do. This was particularly important as the set has many sliding screens which divide up the stage into interior and exterior scenes. I had to make sure that each dancer knew when and where to push each screen so that all the scene changes would run smoothly. This also meant working with stage management to check that the correct screens were placed on the correct tracks.

Before I left for Lithuania, I met with the choreographer a couple of times to go through all the music cues and to make sure that she had all the information she might need for when I wasn’t there. I brought my notation score, my music score, my book of stage plans for the whole opera as well as an index of exits and entrances cross-referenced to the music score.

Because of the nature of the production this index was extremely useful in rehearsals. The set has several narrow doors on either side of the stage as well as a set of stairs leading behind the raked stage. Who enters through which door and in what order becomes very important in order to prevent collisions and make everything run smoothly. The stage plans were very useful as a quick reference to make sure the screens were in the correct place. Other members of the production team also found them useful, so I left a copy of the stage plans for them to use.

While I was there, I also had the opportunity to teach an informal notation lesson to interested dancers. The opera and ballet companies in Lithuania share the same building and some of the dancers in Madam Butterfly were borrowed from the ballet company. Although they had heard of dance notation before, no one had ever seen what it looked like. It was great to be able to introduce it to them so that they could understand the purpose of notation and a little bit about how it works.

Working for the opera company in Lithuania was a wonderful experience and I found everyone very friendly and helpful. They even baked a birthday cake for one of our dancers! The majority of the Lithuanians spoke excellent English and there was always someone ready to translate for those who weren’t as fluent. Overall, although the rehearsals were hard work, there was such a positive atmosphere that it was a lot of fun. If given the opportunity, I wouldn’t hesitate to return.

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