Leaping into Dance Literacy through the Language of Dance®

By Teresa Heiland

The main aim of this book is to present the theory and purpose underpinning the approaches to dance literacy as explored by the Language of Dance® community in the USA and UK. Through their teacher training programs, they are changing the face of dance-based dance literacy using motif notation.

Through their teacher training programs, they are changing the face of dance-based dance literacy using motif notation. This book reveals how dance notation literacy has changed due to practices being focused on constructivist and constructionist pedagogy. Based on work by dance educator Ann Hutchinson Guest and expanded upon by her protégés, this is the first book of its kind to bring together theory, praxis, original research outcomes, taxonomies, model lesson plans, learning domain taxonomies of dance, and voices of dance teachers who have explored using dance notation literacy. We are in a new era for educating with dance notation, focusing on learners’ engagement by making connections between the learning domains using constructivist and constructionist learning approaches.

Arts-literate dancers can deepen their dance craft and transfer their arts knowledge, capacities, and skills to lifelong learning. Dance-based dance literacy practices using notation enhance learners’ flexibility, adaptability, self-direction, initiative, productivity, responsibility, leadership, and cross-cultural skills. 

The book will appeal to dance educators focusing on cognitive and metacognitive learning in dance using communication, problem-solving, and critical thinking.

Useful for preschool and primary teachers aiming to integrate dance into classroom experiences and for secondary teachers teaching dance and looking to upgrade their approach to dance literacy so students are able to achieve higher level cognitive learning, problem solving, and social skills in dance classrooms.

Choreographers and dance teachers will find new approaches to dance making and to expressing their craft using a system that is well codified and now augmented with examples to guide them with making their own projects and processes.

Anyone with an interest in the idea of dance literacy will find concrete examples of how to put their knowledge into practice to advance their teaching and dance making.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Release date: Jan 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781789386127

Book preview

PART 1

BACKGROUND AND DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE OF DANCE® PEDAGOGY

1

The Development of the Movement Alphabet® and Language of Dance®

Using LOD Motif Notation is a somatic and sensory experience for me. The sensory awareness awakened by the analysis and symbolic representation is an experience that I've never had access to in past study of dance. New discoveries are experienced each and every time, no matter how simple the concept may appear. My somatic understanding deepens as I am finding how my body produces movements or a movement phrase instead of focusing on sculpting the experience from the outside in.

(Kodee Van Nort)

For most dancers, dancing or kinesthetic knowing is the primary approach to personal expression. Some dancers say their approach to knowing is through the body–mind–spirit using three intertwining types of literacy. All other possible literacies—speaking, writing, music, media, anatomy, culture, and so forth—help make that primary literacy more realized, more focused, more communicated, and may be more understood to dancers and people with whom they communicate. Motif Notation is a tool used to identify motifs (distinctive features or dominant ideas in an artistic composition or movement activity) to organize thinking and make movement-thinking visible in written form. The Language of Dance (LOD) Approach, created by Ann Hutchinson Guest and developed by her proteges, integrates a conceptual and pedagogical framework for using Motif Notation. LOD includes a framework for a pedagogy of literacy processes for problem-solving using a playful, investigative approach to focus and weave imagination, critical thinking, and discovery. It all grew from one woman's vision and her connection to many creative colleagues who helped develop her work since its inception in 1967 with the LODC UK.

Guest explains how the LOD and Labanotation are different from Rudolf Laban's spatial movement analysis systems. She said,

Labanotation is not based on Rudolf Laban's theories, but on the facts established in the scientific study of space, directions, relation to gravity, practical use of the body and its parts and the application of dynamic aspects. Albrecht Knust, who contributed greatly to the development of Kinetography Laban, also divorced his work from Laban theories. All of us who have carried the notation to higher levels respect the fact that Laban originated the basic ideas which were subsequently developed into other directions to serve particular needs. This is evidenced by the inclusion of Laban's name in Labanotation and Kinetography Laban. The LOD movement exploration is based on the Movement Alphabet®, which is not Laban related. The Motif symbols used are derived from Labanotation with the addition of certain signs required to indicate aspects not commonly needed in Labanotation.

Guest is one of the primary developers and distributors of Rudolf Laban's system of Kinetography, a system for analyzing and recording dances (first published by Rudolf Laban in Schrifttanz [Written Dance] 1928), for which she later coined the name Labanotation. Laban's interest turned to other matters within a few years, and, Guest expressed, he magnanimously gave his notation system to the world (2015: 1). However, no central authority was established to advance the development of the system.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Guest began exploring notation symbols in freer, more creative ways for teaching applications with children at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. She experimented with motif ideas, using the symbols without the structured placement on a staff in 1960 (Guest 2015: 3). Her explorations and research with children taught her how play and scaffolding were needed to foster a child's movement creativity.

After consulting many lists and sources including the Seven Movements in Dance as taught in the Cecchetti Classical Ballet Method, Laban's list of basic actions, and the writings of Margaret H'Doubler, she codified her definition of the ABC's of movement, the Movement Alphabet.

(lodc.org)

She became inspired to identify and codify a list of actions universal to all movement forms, which she has called the Movement Alphabet. These prime movement actions, or movement verbs, are represented by basic Motif Notation symbols together with the corresponding movement/dance terminology and make up the underlying framework of her whole Motif Notation system. She also found that children needed complex movements to be deconstructed to their most basic elements with options to be built back up again in new ways. At this same time, another notation specialist and movement analyst named Valerie Preston-Dunlop began developing a freer use of Motif Writing in the 1960s and contributed the Spring symbol to the vocabulary (personal communication, Guest July 2021). Preston-Dunlop's book, An Introduction to Kinetography Laban, was first published in 1963, followed by a second edition in 1966. She published her first book on Motif Writing, as it was then called, in 1965 (Guest 2015: 3). She then created books on Motif Writing:

In England, the need for a freer use of the Labanotation symbols arose when Valerie Preston taught Laban's Educational Dance to physical education teachers, one of whom suggested the name, Motif Writing. This led to Preston's development of the usage and the subsequent publication in 1967 of her books on the subject entitled Readers in Kinetography Laban, Series [A and] B, Motif Writing for Dance.

(lodc.org)

These developments led Guest to develop her teacher training courses at the Language of Dance Centre in the United Kingdom (1967). Through years of work at London's Teacher Training College of the Royal Academy of Dance with adults in the 1970s, she codified LOD and produced the book, Your Move: A New Approach to the Study of Movement and Dance in 1983. With the development of the Language of Dance Center in the United States (1997) and the creative efforts of Tina Curran, founding Executive Director of the LODC USA, the expanded and second edition of Your Move: The Language of Dance® Approach to the Study of Movement and Dance was published in 2008.

Guest's humor, paired with Curran's intellectual brilliance, pedagogical frameworks, and differentiated teaching methods, helped LOD to have a wide range of literacies available for learning situations, such as in technique, composition, history, and heritage contexts. The work met more people's needs than Guest could have when she began working with young children. Guest's early Motif Notation project was made even more accessible to dancers across many contexts because of the tools inherent in concepts made visible by being embodied and drawn in symbolic form. LOD had expanded to reach around the globe through her students, who have become her colleagues and have continued her work by expanding upon the pedagogical approaches. Their creative applications of this flexible dance literacy system grew out of movement curiosity, a playful spirit, a desire to communicate, and the will to share multiple approaches to exploring dance. This book aims to capture and share with readers these approaches to the pedagogy of LOD.

What is LOD?

The LOD is both a pedagogical approach and a comprehensive conceptual framework for exploring dance. LOD provides an alphabet of written symbols representing universal movement ideas that support teaching, creativity, composition, technique, analysis, movement games, discussion, and more. When using the language, which is often called Motif Notation, dancers learn and create physically, intellectually, and emotionally to promote the education of the whole person through movement ideas. This approach to movement exploration and dance study uses a distinct set of symbols to represent a fresh and original way of investigating and understanding movement. The LOD Approach is based on the building blocks of movement, starting from the most basic elements and building to complex structures. For example, a typical LOD class could include the following: creative movement warm up and exploration with symbol concepts; development of movement ideas leading to composition; writing, reading or creating dances using Motif Notation; performing the choreographed movement; and discussion and appreciation of the work explored, created, or performed. A full elaboration of the concepts and grammar is available in the text, Your Move: The Language of Dance® Approach to the Study of Movement and Dance, by Guest and Curran (2008). See the Movement Alphabet concepts in Figure 1.1 by Guest and Curran (2008: xxxix–xli), plus the addition of the concept of Motion added to the palette of ideas by the LODC USA in 2021.

Seventeen LOD symbols that make up the Movement Alphabet are shown from most general at the top of the diagram to more specific at the bottom. Symbols are identified with words below each. The concepts included are Any Action, Stillness, Motion, Destination, Any Rotation, Any Flexion, Any Extension, Traveling/Any Path, Any Direction, Motion Toward, Motion Away, Balance, Falling, Any Form of Relating, Shape.

FIGURE 1.1: The LOD Movement Alphabet with Motion* added by the LODC USA in 2021.

Values embedded in the LOD Approach, the community, and in this book

Play

The LOD Approach aims to explore through playful learning. Playful learning, or even better, a pedagogy of play, is a phrase coined by the Project Zero team of Ben Mardell et al. that resonates with our LOD pedagogy (A Project Zero Working Paper 2016: 2). We use a playful approach to pedagogy with all ages that we encounter. Playful learning helps build disciplinary knowledge, critical thinking habits, and collaborative skills in a laboratory-like environment that supports exploration and experimentation. This pedagogy encourages risk-taking, creative problem solving, and joyful explorations in which dancers want to engage and explore together, whether they are six years old or 96. The LOD Approach to creativity uses play in many ways to engage with cognitive activities, dancing, and social–emotional engagement. As a result, participants gain intrinsic motivation, become curious and challenged, find satisfaction and enjoyment, and develop a sense of belonging in a learning community. The LOD Approach provides many activities in the Tool Kit in Chapter 4, so readers can explore these playful activities with dancers and then develop new activities of their own.

Whole person

The LOD community prioritizes the education of the whole person through dancing with the integration of our thinking, sensing, feeling, evolving selves while fostering academic, professional, and creative goals. The pedagogy weaves intellectual concepts with educational approaches supporting social–emotional, cultural, aesthetic, social justice, and historical issues into the embodied experience using diverse and flexible strategies and applications. The educators recognize and value new experiences as opportunities for further growth in avenues important to each learner.

Community and connection

The LOD Approach brings people together in dance and dance making by creating relationships through intellectual inquiry. We aim to increase social literacy and sensitivity to ourselves and others, promote character and values that support meaning and purpose, and uncover patterns, questions, and implications about being human in this world. When using Motif Notation in a community, dancers support connections with others, create conversations, and gain flexibility with problem-solving. The pedagogy has breadth in scope and application with dance activities geared to connect to the cultural values, with diversity and awareness of society and culture.

What is LOD pedagogy about?

Embodied meaning making and cycles of literacy processes

The learning activities we devise cycle in various ways to guide learners toward personal awareness and meaning-making. These activities cycle through a series of processes called literacy processes. Engagement in each process—sensing, observing, reflecting, identifying, interpreting, notating, and creating—develops an aspect of literacy in the broad sense of that term. See Figure 1.2 for the cycles of LOD literacy processes. Depending on the activity or the entry point, the order in which one cycles through these literacy processes is flexible. The end goal is experiential meaning-making, part of a recursive process that cycles from sensing to creating.

A diagram made of 7 grey arrows in a circle with the words sensing, observing, reflecting, identifying, interpreting, notating, and creating between each arrow. The words LOD Cycles of Literacy Process are in the center of the circle.

FIGURE 1.2: Cycles of LOD literacy processes.

Recursive process—Exploring dance through Motif Notation is a recursive process. Cursive comes from the Latin word currere, meaning to run. When introduced with the prefix re- (to do again), we have the cycle of repeating a currere or a run, or the word recursive. This means that when we dance and use Motif Notation with dance, we repeat various steps in a creative process, though not necessarily every step in the process the same way every time. We warm up, explore a topic, read a short score, interpret and create movement, share the movement, process with a peer, read for accuracy, revise, perform again, discuss, and so forth. We run through this sensory, meaning-making, and generative process. Similar to how dance composition is like writing composition (including invention, research, drafting, revising, and editing), LOD's recursive process includes reading and writing notation in our embodied research processes. For LOD users, the cycles of literacy bring about play, creativity, and community connection when we use notation to perform, create, and study dances.

The cycles of literacy processes include sensing, observing, reflecting, identifying, interpreting, notating, and creating, which I will briefly describe from the point of view of a typical LOD experience.

Sensing is a somatic experience, noticing and feeling the sensations in a movement concept, embodying a movement concept using the senses, and exploring how many ways a particular concept provides movement experiences.

Observing is the process of looking for concepts or elements of dance in a dance work or dancing experience and observing to notice parts in relationship to the whole.

Reflecting is connecting the sensate body with various cognitive processes (language, notation, dancing) at multiple levels of depth toward many goals that relate to sensing, observing, identifying, interpreting, notating, and relating to each other and putting these into perspective to self, others, and the world.

Identifying is the act of naming or notating a concept in symbolic form or in a language as we experience concepts in movement or while observing movement.

Interpreting is the process of reading a written score and translating it into movement or dance using kinetic logic with accuracy, technical proficiency, expression, and using aesthetic awareness.

Notating in Motif Notation is the act of writing movement concepts in symbolic form by selecting the most salient components to notate, by documenting one's own or another's movement in Motif Notation, by perceiving and capturing kinetic logic in Motif Notation, and by conveying that legibly for others to understand.

Creating is when a dancer composes a dance, crafts a performance or community event, or coaches other dancers; a dance teacher devises creative notation structures to guide others in learning through movement explorations, scores, games, or activities; or a dance researcher analyzes, deconstructs, recreates, or compares dances using notation.

During an LOD-based learning activity, these seven processes may appear in any order and often repeat or cycle many times. The LOD pedagogical framework uses the processes in various ways. The cycle of literacy focuses on student-centered learning and supports the theme or goal of the learning using Motif Notation to explore movement-thinking.

An example of a lesson plan in which a dancer is exposed to a cycle of these seven processes would be in a repertory class studying Bob Fosse's The Pajama Game (1954), using LOD Motif Notation as a tool. The teacher explores choreography for a vocal sound and dance trio titled Steam Heat, using the concepts of Gestural Pathway with props while traveling on a Pathway. The teacher has the dancers explore other salient features of this trip: addressing, whole body shapes, body parts relating, clapping, heel drops, vocal sounds, lead with pelvis, sliding on low level, buoyancy of legs, leg gestures, accents, facing, and stillness.

The teacher guides the dancers through a Movement Alphabet warm up that focuses on the first seven concepts in the center and then traveling across the room, exploring the use of different body parts and introducing gestural pathways with props, accents, and clapping (always sensing the concepts). Students then take turns improvising, observing each other, watching Bob Fosse's choreography in the Steam Heat scene from The Pajama Game, Reflecting on how he used these concepts to create the sound of the steam, the mechanical feeling with the dancers’ movements, and the coordination of the way the dancers Address the audience and each other.

Students identify moments that are especially interesting from the film, naming what they see. Next, dancers can choreograph their favorite two approaches to combining rhythm, sound, gesture, and pathway and then notate the basic combinations to create a record of the choreography that they created. Next, they can trade and interpret a classmate's score, building two short dances into a slightly longer dance. The teacher can also give small groups different short Motif Notation score readings to challenge them with particular sections of choreography, followed by the groups co-teaching each other to connect the short dances to form the whole.

Seven basic language skills of LOD

In addition to the cycles of literacy processes, the LOD pedagogy also includes seven basic language skills. The main form of expression in the LOD is the kinesthetic skill of dancing. While dancing is not traditionally considered a language, it is a dancer's primary form of expression. In the LOD Approach, dancers practice five other language skills to support their learning, communication, and delivery of information about their dancing. Those five languages have specific applications. Listening, speaking, reading, writing in notation, writing in non-notation languages, and viewing all involve using concepts from the Motif Notation score, the dancing, or the unfolding activity. These seven language skills create a bridge that traverses the traditional ways of knowing to build a complex language process in one's first language, dance, and a dance-based literacy rooted in a rich understanding of the elements of dance: kinesthetic, aural, oral, tactile, and visual.

Language domain

The language domain most people are familiar with includes five categories: phonology (speech sounds), syntax (grammar and arrangement of words), morphology (components of words), semantics (meaning of vocabulary), and pragmatics (written and spoken communication) (Gleason 2017). The LOD language domain parallels this model, but it has been rearranged and expanded to focus on the second language acquisition of Motif Notation to explore and understand movement with seven categories. The LOD language domain includes embodiment of concepts, vocabulary in one's native tongues, grammar and syntax of Motif Notation, autography of symbols, comprehension of single and layered concepts, fluency with reading and interpreting Motif Notation, and interacting in discourse in a Motif Notation community with any of these aspects of language domains. See Table 1.1 for a side-by-side comparison of the two domains.

TABLE 1.1: Comparison of LOD language domain with the standard language domain.

*Not a part of the standard language domain, but included here to parallel the LOD language domain.

We advise anyone who explores dance notation literacy to start with simple, playful applications of Motif Notation, so concept recall feels fun, engaging, and purposeful. Meaning-making should be central to the activities so dancers can engage in the purpose of the activity, game, or goal you have established. Expand upon language skill development with Motif Notation gradually by scaffolding toward more complex applications as your dancers are ready for challenges, variety, and complex activities with Motif Notation. We encourage various languages (concepts in one's native tongues and Motif Notation) to be introduced as needed in a community-sensitive and community-inclusive approach, which second language educator Stephen Krashen considers in alignment with his second language acquisition hypothesis, rather than in a grammar-focused approach. This way, the tools and concepts will be made available and be absorbed as needed to play the game at hand, and it will happen because dancers will want to know how to use the tool to achieve the spirit of the desired outcome. Multiple language domain proficiencies are emergent at any time in a dance class that includes the LOD Approach.

Metalinguistic awareness with a language is necessary for developing higher-order language skills and is described as the ability to think about and reflect upon language (Gillon 2004: 10). In the standard approach to proficiency with languages, metalinguistic awareness requires proficiency with categories 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 (notice in the Standard Approach, item A., Autography, appears only as an additional category included to frame a parallel with the LOD language domain). Because LOD explicitly focuses on body movement and Motif Notation, two more categories are included to reveal the layers of language integration that LOD requires. These two categories are items B. Embodiment and C., Autography of symbols. Autography is often included as a component of language learning, but it is not part of the standard domain. It is included in the LOD language domain due to the knowledge and craft required to communicate with clear syntax with hand-drawn signs.

LOD thinking

The LOD conceptual and pedagogical frameworks thread ways of thinking together for problem-solving, analysis, observing, etc. Because the LOD system is a creative application that expands the structured notation system of Labanotation, the concepts are based on the basic actions (or movement verbs), such as turn, with qualities (or the how), such as buoyant, to bring attention to thinking-feeling-action-attention. The thinking behind the LOD includes two overarching distinctions. One distinction is whether you are taking action versus pausing action, that of Action or Stillness. The other is about being in ongoing flow versus aiming to arrive at a goal in some way, that of Motion or Destination. In addition to those two main categories are the elements of dance categories of body, space, time, energy, and relationship. Each of the five elements of dance categories provides a world of exciting concepts awaiting exploration through Motif Notation and embodiment. While these are the traditional dance elements, they are modes of directing one's thinking for this book. For a complete list of the concepts, see Motif at a Glance! A Quick Guide to Motif Notation Description—The Method of Recording Movement Concepts. Hutchinson Guest provides an additional framework for the adverbs; however, the system of Laban Bartenieff Movement Analysis (LBMA) Motif Notation symbology carefully covers the adverbs. Guest chooses to leave this system to that branch of the Laban Bartenieff Movement Analysis community. Because many of us use LBMA concepts in our classrooms and studios, I have included an appendix in this volume that details these concepts and shows how to write and use some of these concepts. See Appendix A.

Interestingly, before Laban died in 1958, he designated four people responsible for the system's future: Albrecht Knust, Sigurd Leeder, Lisa Ullmann, and Ann Hutchinson Guest. Each has left a legacy for performing, analyzing, and communicating about movement. Guest's LOD Approach has grown and spread to create a network of people together in a shared language that unifies our communication across the miles. Through Guest's uncanny way of bringing together playful, creative, inspired dancers via LOD thinking, the LOD Approach continues to connect, engage, and enlighten movers worldwide.

Wisdom from the field

This book is designed to help dance teachers integrate cognitive, kinesthetic, and social-emotional learning in their classrooms. When LOD is integrated into dance classes, it works with resonance to focus students’ listening, speaking, reading, and writing to develop and apply students’ knowledge, skills, contextual understanding, and artistic expression to perform dance, make dances, and analyze dance. The LOD Approach should be carefully integrated into learning environments to best support the palette of literacy processes one has in mind to match the lesson's goals. Educators must be sensitive to the cultures of dance forms when selecting literacy processes used to explore them. Culturally responsive teaching necessitates teachers create an appropriate learning environment using a culturally appropriate milieu to explore the dance form. This consideration means the LOD literacy processes need to match the culture of the dance form appropriately. Teachers may choose to use LOD to investigate specific dance genres and styles, especially if their students have become comfortable using the LOD Approach. However, there may be genres and styles in which any external literacy processes might disrupt learning. The entire cycle of literacy processes of LOD may not be the best fit. LOD teachers must be mindful of honoring cultures and situate learning in real-world practices to model the real world as appropriate in a classroom (Ladson-Billings 2010). Teachers must also be sensitive when determining how much of each literacy process is appropriate for a dancer's education. For example, dancers who are good at observing dances and writing Motif Notation scores may not be as adept at sensing and creating their own dances from a score. Still, both processes will help the student to develop life-long learning skills (Heiland 2019). In summary, sensitivity to culture and consideration of students’ learning needs are equally important when planning using LOD.

Research from the field

Between 1940 and 1998, the only published reports on the successful application of Motif Notation were anecdotal accounts by teachers rather than empirical research documents. The lack of empirical research results from the latent application of research methods in arts education in general; these reports represent this era's research among dance educators. These teachers documented their journeys and successes, but not their struggles or outliers, as empirical research would require (Babitz 1940; Beck 1988; Kipling Brown 1998; Bucek 1998; Davis 1995; Delaney 1998; Lasky 1972; Oliver 1998; Unrau cited in Bucek 1998; Venable 1969, 1998). Teachers of dance composition shared their successful classroom experiences with Motif Notation (Benesh 1960; Preston-Dunlop 1966; Intravia 1975; Lohmiller 1977). Those who taught dance techniques described their experiences using notation as a tool for learning and performing dance (Bichan 1978; Guest 1983; Lloyd-Jones 1997). Educators also proposed hypotheses about how notation aids students’ cognitive clarity and language acquisition due to the clear conceptual framework of Motif Notation (Debenham 1997; Moses 1980; Van Zile 1985–86; Youngerman 1984; Olson 1994).

Elsa Posey (1998) conducted informal, action research to support her teaching philosophy that notation is essential to best practices, concluding that children should learn dance notation while learning to dance, rather than later in college, as most dancers do. She begins using symbols in her dance school when children are three years old. By the age of five, children will understand 80 dance words/concepts and their associated symbols. They are literate and can organize and read motif symbol sequences. Based on her extensive teaching experience, she discovered that Motif Notation empowered visual learners and boys in particular. She attributed this empowerment to the spontaneity it provides learners through sensory data that supports expressing ideas or moods. Motif Notation, she discovered, aided in the learning and remembering of movement sequences and expanded children's vocabulary by reinforcing movement concepts. While Posey's results are anecdotal rather than formal research, her approach to literacy provides a framework for teaching students to look at dance and guiding them to become better able to talk about dance through the use of Motif Description (Posey 1998).

Motif Notation is included in various sectors of dance programs in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, and various other countries, which indicates that this use of notation-based literacy in dance education is valued. Many public school teachers, private school teachers, college, university, and studio teachers have integrated Motif Notation into their teaching (Odette Blum cited in Williams 2010; Barbara Bashaw cited in Bucek 1998; Brown 1998; Bucek 1998, 2004, 2006; Ray Cook cited in Bucek 1998; Curran 1999; Farrant 1999; Ferreiro 2007; Gingrasso personal communication regarding unpublished action research study, April 4, 2007; Guest 1999; Oona Haaranen personal communication, June 23, 2008; Karen King-Cavin cited in Bucek 1998; Beth Megill personal communication, July 23, 2017; O'Shei 2008; Parrish 2004; Elsa Posey cited in Bucek 1998; Tori Rogoski personal communication, September 17, 2004; Tseng and Wang 2007; Unrau 1998; Sharon Unrau cited in Bucek 1998; Charlotte Wile cited in Bucek 1998; and Linda Yoder cited in Bucek 1998).

From 1940 to 1998, only one empirical study about notation-use was conducted, but to my knowledge, the research was never published. Nancy Moses (1980) conducted a comparison study of two ballet classes; one taught with ten minutes of Sutton Movement Writing and the other a control group taught without the written notation. She studied the effects of movement notation on the performance, cognitions, and attitudes of beginning ballet students at the college level to learn that knowledge of beginning ballet increased in the notation group.

Beginning in 2000, dance educators began conducting empirical studies and publishing results. According to Edward Warburton's (2000) study of young children using notation in a creative movement class, while children learned about dance when their teacher used everyday language to express concepts, verbal instruction did not appear to be the most effective learning method in dance. To those who argue that using notation will deplete the experience of dance, [his research showed] that notations […] enrich the experience by embodying LOD in ways that verbal description cannot approximate (Warburton 2003: para. 15). When Warburton studied technical dance learning among children, conceptual explanations were sufficient to result in well-integrated skill development; however, the addition of notation in the technique classroom accelerated psychomotor skill development. If the goal of dance education is to help dancers increase their abilities to use dance concepts, to ‘read, write, and perform’ dance, then notation-use is a good tool for doing so. His study also shows that notation promotes recognition skills and facilitates young children's abilities to understand dance because it delineates for students the types and categories of action in movement. Verbal instruction was discovered to be ineffective as a teaching method for optimal learning. When combined with conceptual explanations of dance movement, notation has accelerated students’ abilities to produce accurate dance movements (Warburton 2000). Warburton's study (2000) confirms that children learn to dance and speak and write about dance more quickly and with more meaning-making when they study notation.

In a conference presentation in 2001, Tina Curran suggested that dance notation could be more effective as an instrument of learning than an independent course of study. She and the LOD teaching staff implemented this new focus in the LOD teacher training curriculum. This shift in the use of dance notation matches the research across disciplines in education and psychology regarding how humans benefit from learning with symbols and how symbols influence the transfer of learning (Curran 2001).

Anna Karin Stahle-Varney (2001) investigates how forms of dance notation assist users of all ages in different kinds of dance classes to clarify various aspects of dancing, observing that dancers become independent thinkers, helps clarify technique aims and is especially useful in improvisation and composition activities. When students’ notation education lagged behind their embodied literacy, they struggled a bit (Stahle-Varney 2001). As Posey pointed out in her earlier work, it is critical to begin learning languages at a young age so that this disparity does not impede expression. The findings of Stahle-Varney's empirical study led to the analysis of two significant categories of notation for dancers (participants were users of Labanotation, Motif Notation, L[B]MA/Motif Notation, Benesh, Feuillet, and a Philippine system). The two major categories of analysis formed were (1) Direct use: teaching movement concepts, technique, and repertoire; and (2) Indirect use: preparing for dance classes and the teacher's verbal expiations. The overall common threads between (1) and (2) were (a) the students’ development of a common language and (b) the ability to observe, which gives concrete relevance to abstract concepts through analysis.

Nira Al-Dor (2006) states, The literate process is, for the most part, cognitive and voluntary and necessitates conscious and intellectual action–factors that are not necessarily involved in spoken language. As a result, it appears that we must, as Al-Dor puts it, think and speak movement to define its elements. The acts of graphically encoding and decoding dance elements can help to strengthen the conceptual foundation. Aspects of creation, self-expression, and the development of modes of communication emerge during this process. Teresa Heiland's (2009) qualitative study of the pedagogy of LOD as applied to three Introduction to Choreography courses reveals how students experienced using the LOD approach to learning with Motif Notation while exploring composition. Students expressed that LOD concepts/symbols enhanced students’ understanding and communication of dance concepts, communication with the elements of dance, precision with language and ideas, and increased creative flow during dance making. A few students said symbols represent emotion, while a few students also said they felt no emotions. Two male engineering students were happy to have structures related to how they think in their engineering major—coding with symbols. Because these students were discussing multiple intelligences and approaches to learning, Heiland conducted a study in which dancers self-assess how they perceive their various approaches to learning. She wanted to see if dancers who don't use notation think of themselves differently from those who use it. This study showed that dancers who don't use notation tend to see themselves quite the same as those who use Motif Notation when it comes to learning in general. What showed up as being different were those who only use Labanotation. Labanotation-only users self-reported as analyzing a bit longer than Motif Notation-only users. Labanotation is more detailed and likely takes more analyzing time to achieve. Two researchers studied how Labanotation improves dance techniques. Research by János Fügedi (2003) and Aspasia Dania (2013) shows how Kinetography/Labanotation improves cognitive and psychomotor learning in dance techniques among their traditional dance forms, Hungarian and Greek, respectively.

This distinction between the use of Motif Notation and Kinetography/Labanotation