Dance movement: a focus on the technology

Dance notation systems, like music notes, enable documentation of symbolic representations of movement as signs on paper for individual analysis and interpretation. Today, dance notation systems operate within a digital environment in dance notation applications that facilitate the process of recording movement. The author argues that a key objective in the development of these applications should be to provide the user with an unambiguous method to record and represent movement. These applications offer varying functionality in their use of technology for the representation of movement and can be broadly defined in three different categories. Dance notation applications make up the first category - they help notate or record specific forms of movement using dance notation. Notation-based applications, the second category, include applications that use dance notation as a basis for their development. The last category, dance technology, consists of applications that use emerging technologies to record and visualize movement. While each application has a defined use, it's important to consider how effective the technologies they employ are in successfully achieving their objectives. In this article, the author focuses on dance applications in these three categories. The author considers the limitations of existing technologies in their ability to effectively describe and record movement within a specific context.