DanceWriting History to SignWriting History...

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
May 13, 2004

Tini Pel wrote:
> Oh Valerie, absolutely great !!!! Thank you so much for taking the 
> time out to share the history of your Sign Writing with us. Yes I 
> could read the dance writing although not all of it, as I can not 
> remember the circles besides the stick figures on the floor line. I do 
> have to get back at it and I will when our spring sessions are 
> finished. I still have your autographed book and lessons and since I 
> am returning into teaching ballet I want to be able again of "jotting 
> down" some ballet notes and class preparations. It was great reading 
> about your experiences I have printed it all out and will keep it at 
> my desk.

Hello Everyone, and Tini!
That is so nice of you to take the time to read all that history...I 
hope I didn't bore everyone! And congratulations, Tini, on returning to 
teaching dance. Thank you for sending me your new brochure...it is 
lovely.

For the List members...Tini and I go way back. We met in Copenhagen, 
around 1974 or 1975? Is that right, Tini? It was when I returned to 
teach the Royal Danish Ballet, I believe I held some DanceWriting 
seminars outside the Royal Theater and I believe you attended one of 
those? And then years later, Tini took a series of correspondence 
courses in DanceWriting with the DW teachers at the Boston Conservatory 
of Music. When Tini started teaching kids to sign, I was totally 
astonished! So there are so many twists and turns to our history 
together...

By the way, Tini, the Position Symbols, also called the 3-D Symbols, 
were to the side of the stick figure on the floor line, in the 
BEGINNING of the writing system, but as time went on, they were dropped 
below the five line staff, so they did not clutter the stick figure. 
Why? Because that way, we could take the 3-D symbols away, if we didn't 
want all that detail...so most people just read the stick figure and 
occasionally look down at the 3-D symbols to see something, if they are 
having problems reading the stick figure...We found out that most 
people do not need the 3-D symbols at all...

So Tini, by the time you took the correspondence courses with our 
DanceWriting teachers in Boston, you were learning the symbols under 
the staff, not to the side on the floor line.

List members...Here is a sample DanceWriting page that is from 
1973...See the round symbols under the five-lined staff? Those are the 
3-D symbols we are talking about...They show the 3-D relationship for 
the legs and arms, relating to the center of the body. They were 
developed because sometimes it was hard to see if one leg was hiding 
behind the other....The attached diagram shows an excerpt from a Sheet 
Dance published in 1973:



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