CHAPTER 8

Everyone Will Be Famous For 15 Minutes - Andy Warhol
As the Met’s official, resident choreologist, my position was now far above that of a dancer, even though I had been a soloist. Never before had an American dance company hired someone specifically to document its dances. I was in a unique position, and the Met was considered extremely forward thinking to employ a choreologist on staff. In fact, the very word ‘choreologist’ had a certain glamour and mystery about it. What was it I did? Why did the Met need such a person?

The newly built opera house and anything connected with it at that time, was naturally a magnet for publicity. I was included, for a while at least, as a person of some interest. It was hard to believe this attention was really happening to someone who was considered by some to be little more than a glorified secretary. During this brief period of celebrity I was interviewed by newspapers, Time magazine, New York magazine, radio and TV talk shows. I was asked to write articles about my work for glossy magazines such as “Dance”, “Opera News” and other publications. In a sense, it was beyond the bounds of probability that this could happen, but it did.

My job was to eventually notate every ballet in the Met’s repertory by attending rehearsals and performances and by writing down in symbolic language every bit of dancing that passed before my eyes. Why keep this record? Why should the Met even need and want it?

Well, for starters it had everyday uses as a tool in the ballet’s everyday operations. The choreographer or ballet mistress could, and often did forget a step or sequence that was set at an earlier rehearsal. I could demonstrate the missing steps from my notes and the rehearsal could go on. Previously, dancers often fumbled around trying to remember. In a sense, the written record is like the minutes of a meeting: more exact, more reliable than anyone’s memory; the document enables the rehearsal to go on to new business.

When the choreography for a ballet is finished – granting the contradiction in terms here since choreography is never ‘finished’ in the static sense – I prepared a final score from my rough rehearsal notes. This final version was useful to the company by making it possible for a far more economical use of rehearsal time. It could be used for teaching roles to replacements in the cast, or for that matter to whole new casts in future revivals.

As for long-range benefits, the final version may also be salable to another company, or it can be lent to or even exchanged with a cooperating company.

Because the method of production based on choreographic scores has established its efficiency, choreologists are often asked to stage a work for another company. The choreography of a ballet thus preserved can be transmitted across oceans and down generations, just as the plans for a building may enable a builder centuries later to reconstruct it. Since choreology offers a universal written language, it not only makes dance a creation that can be preserved but puts it in the class of material that may be stolen. Therefore, choreology offers the protection of international copyright.

All this is due to the genius of Rudolph and Joan Benesh. Photo: Rudolph and Joan Benesh Fortunately, during the previous season while I was dancing in the ballets myself, it made it a lot easier to analyze what I was writing down. It is far simpler to notate while the choreographer is actually setting the dances, step by step, than when they are already finished and in performance. While traveling with the Met on its annual National tour, I would stand in the wings, straining to see what was going on, or else looking from the corner of my eye while dancing onstage myself, to see what the other dancers were doing. But now, for the first time, I was able to work right along with the choreographers as they composed their dances.

My Method Of Creating A Benesh Notation Score
For those who may be interested in my work method, I would start by analyzing the music, then taking rough notes in pencil during the first day’s rehearsal. How many dancers [boys and girls] were performing and their movement patterns, singly or in groups. Next came the steps. A great deal of data can be conveyed in Benesh with a few strokes of the pencil, not only the particular step or movement shape but the location of the dancer on the stage at that precise moment, the direction they are facing, their relation to the other dancers, and the musical beat or sub-beat on which the movement or pose occurs. Under certain circumstances the standard ballet vocabulary can be written almost at performance speed, rather like shorthand dictation. Details, such as unusual hand movements, strange displacements of the torso or an odd turn of the head can be held in memory and written in later.

After this rough copy was made, I would go about tidying it up so anyone else trained in Benesh could read and understand it. In fact, I had been teaching it to the Met ballet mistress at that time, Audrey Keane, and some of the dancers as well.

Photo: Teaching a class in Benesh Notation

Producing a score often involves eliminating nonessentials and searching out clearer ways of stating a movement to avoid redundancy. When dress rehearsals began, there was more work in checking over my rough working score against the performance and the exact placement of the dancers within the stage set. From all this material I prepared a master score, looking something like an orchestral score. Naturally, the more work put into a score, the fuller and richer it becomes. Even after it is complete, I would continue to attend rehearsals and performances to check for any detail that might have been missed, or to see if the choreographer had made a change that would put the score out of date.

Fortunately, dancing in the ballet myself during the previous year, made it a lot easier to analyze what I was writing down. It is far simpler to notate while the choreographer is actually setting the dances, step by step, than when they are already finished and in performance. While on the Met annual tour the previous season, I would stand in the wings, straining to see what was going on, or else looking from the corner of my eye while dancing onstage myself to see what everybody else was doing. But now, for the first time, I was able to work right along with the choreographers as they composed their dances.

Benesh Notation Sample: Paris' variation with the Golden Apple from Dame Alicia's choreography for "Adrianna Lecouvreur"

Photo Below: The actual scene as described by the notation sample

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Backstage At The Met
Being familiar with the Royal Ballet repertory back at the Institute, I wanted to prove to myself at least, that Benesh could handle other forms of dance beside classic ballet. I already knew Benesh could record modern and character dance. We had a lot of instruction in those. It was even beginning to be used in medicine and sports, but I found opera-ballet to be a horse of a different color.

For one thing, singers occupied the stage as well as dancers. The immense amount of opera-scenery, pillars, staircases, even houses have to be considered. Classic ballets have this also but at the new Met it had reached monumental proportions.

There are four stages at the Met. [see illustration below]. For a quick change of scenery, the main stage in center can be quickly replaced by mechanically sinking it below while another takes its place. Other stages can slide in from either side or from the rear.

Another complexity for notation arose with the unusual entrances and exits, often from trap doors or the flies. For these points, peculiar to opera-ballet, I believe I devised some practical solutions for use by other choreologists.

Another thing I found amusing was that opera dancers are practically always carrying a prop of some kind – a basket, a fan, sticks, a banner, and these must be shown in the notation. One consolation is that in opera, dance sequences are usually short. In regular ballet companies, the choreologist may have huge, full-length four-acters to cope with, as I was later to find out when I became resident choreologist for American Ballet Theater.

Photo: Cutaway drawing of Met interior viewed from backstage

So, was I merely a scribe, a trained drudge or hack who knows a kind of shorthand that draws upon his own creativity not at all? The answer is a complex negative. First, as in any form of human expression, there is a filter through which the material of dance must pass before it can be expressed in symbols. This filter is the individuality of the choreologist. A dance being born is often not precise or well defined. Within the limits of its chosen style it is actually improvisation. Thus, the choreologist will not put everything down when they notate. They will not notate a sneeze, nor the involuntary twitch of a calf muscle in a charley horse.

A question keeps coming up. Why notation in the first place? Why not simply film or videotape the dances? Apart from the fact that filming would go against the musician’s Union rules, and that was one of the basic reasons the Met hired me, you could argue why even have a musical score or a play script if all musicians had to do was listen to a recording or an actor see a film to learn their parts?

A quick glance at a video is helpful in learning a dance. I always found it an invaluable tool for myself but it does not have the details notation does, just as a music CD doesn’t obviate the need for printed music.

I often wonder in amazement how young dancers of today seem to be able to easily pick up a dance just by watching a video. On close analysis it turns out they end up with just a rough imitation of what someone else is doing. For the most part, videos give an unfair picture of the dance. Lighting may be poor, movement details may be hidden by other dancers, props, or costumes, entrances and exits missing, or the dancer being watched is giving a poor performance. So they may be given a poor copy of what the choreographer never intended in the first place.

              Copyright © 2006-2008 Richard Holden