SignWriting History: Portugal 1972 - Portugal 2004!

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
May 12, 2004

History of SignWriting
1974 - 2004
   
Chapter 1: DanceWriting
The Early Years: 1966-1974

SignWriting comes from DanceWriting. Both SignWriting and DanceWriting 
belong to a larger "movement notation system" called Sutton Movement 
Writing.

SignWriting was not invented from a prior knowledge of signs or signed 
languages. Nor is it connected to any one signed language, but instead 
records them all with the same symbols.

You do not have to know what signs mean, to write them in SignWriting, 
since the system records "body movement". Signers can record their own 
Sign Language, and foreign Sign Languages too.

As SignWriting is used by more people, certain "linguistically based" 
writing conventions are developing. But from the historic perspective, 
DanceWriting was the "forerunner" to SignWriting. Now SignWriting far 
exceeds DanceWriting in the number of users.

Other dance notation systems have recorded the movements of signed 
languages in the past (as experiments), but SignWriting is different, 
because it is used by thousands of Sign Language users all over the 
world. In 2004, SignWriting is becoming the "written form" for signed 
languages in 27 countries.

Below you will find a brief listing of some of the more important 
events in the early history of DanceWriting, which lead to the 
invention of SignWriting...


1966
DanceWriting Begins
Valerie Sutton, an American, at age 15, was in professional ballet 
training. She invented a stick figure notation system for recording 
ballet steps, for her own personal use.

There is nothing new about stick figures, used by cave men and dancers 
alike, since the beginning of time! In fact, it is not uncommon, in the 
dance world, to see dancers jotting down one position or two, in their 
own form of stick-figure notation. I bet you have done that too! And 
why not? It is fun to see a stick figure move...a little like a 
cartoon.

But historically, only a few stick figure notation systems have become 
writing systems used by more than one person. One such system was 
invented by ballet master Friederich Albert Zorn, centuries earlier, 
and following his inspiration, and the influence of animation films 
created by Walt Disney, Valerie Sutton started "thinking in stick 
figures".

The first official DanceWriting document recorded an entire piece of 
choreography. Valerie was 16 years old, and was asked to choreograph a 
dance for 17 students for a school play, called Katie's Golden 
Horseshoe. She wrote the dance in stick figures, as she was 
choreographing it and teaching it to the dancers. The document is 
around 10 pages long. Some of the students could read the document too!

Attached is one page from Valerie's notebook. At the top of the page, 
you will see boxes. Those are called Pattern Stages, or Room Location, 
showing how different people were interacting with each other on stage. 
For those who know DanceWriting this is fun to decipher. The system has 
changed and improved since then, but you can see that we had hips and 
shoulders, and dots for running and stepping, and some funny little 
triangles that are the forerunner to 3-D symbols:


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: DWHistory1.png
Type: image/png
Size: 49464 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/sw-l/attachments/20040512/2425997d/attachment.png>