Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Dance and Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation in Israel

Deborah Friedes recently shared with the LabanTalk listserv an update on her dance research in Israel, which has included some exposure to Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation. She agreed to let me repost her message, which I thought would interest the Labanotation community:

The announcements for the open theory meeting reminded me that some of you were interested in hearing about my research on contemporary dance in Israel. I'm a little over three months into a Fulbright grant here in Tel Aviv, and the concert dance scene is keeping me very busy! I am blogging about my research at this address:

http://tinyurl.com/33ayzx [DNBlog turned it into a tinyurl to make it fit here]

One particular subject that might be of interest to people on LabanTalk is Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation. Although my research in Israel is centered around movement techniques and choreographic works, I have had some exposure to the notation system because of its prevalence here. During the recent International Exposure festival, where Israeli choreographers present their work to arts presenters from around the world, I saw a performance of Tirza Sapir's "Miniatures" by the Rikudnetto dance group; the 14 short dances were created with and then recorded in Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation. I also sat in on a movement writing class at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance a few weeks ago. Although the class was conducted entirely in Hebrew and my language skills are still rough, I was able to follow part of the discussion, in which the students asked a bit about Laban's work as compared to that of Noa Eshkol. It was a treat to see the Laban effort graph drawn on the blackboard with Hebrew terms! Hopefully I'll have some time to learn a bit more about Eshkol-Wachman while I'm here, and if I do, I'll surely post about it on my blog.

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