Vitalizing Dance Legacy Through the Use of Labanotation as a Staging Tool

Vitalizing Dance Legacy Through the Use of Labanotation as a Staging Tool
Submitted by Mei-Chen Lu – July 23, 2011

Elizabeth McPherson, Assistant Professor at Montclair State University, wrote an article about the process of staging Helen Tamiris's Negro Spirituals and Donald McKayle's Games from Labanotation scores and the benefit of using the scores as a tool.  Her article is published in Journal of Dance Education, Volume 11, Issue 1, 2011. © 2011 Taylor & Francis (Journal of Dance Education is available online at: www.tandfonline.com).

In her abstract, she stated: 

In the 21st century, carrying dance legacy forward and exploring it to provide depth and understanding of the continuum of dance helps ensure that our current and future practice has a scaffold on which to grow and thrive. This article begins by exploring the importance of staging dances from the past to keep dance legacy alive as well as the unique benefits of employing Labanotation as a tool. This discussion is followed by a description of the process of staging a dance from Labanotation from the director's perspective with the specific examples of the author's stagings of Donald McKayle's Games (1951) and Helen Tamiris's Negro Spirituals (1928–1942) at Montclair State University.

To view the full article, please go here.