Joan Benesh (née Rothwell; 24 March 1920 – 27 September 2014) was a British ballet dancer who, with her husband Rudolf, created the Benesh Movement Notation, which is the leading British system of dance notation.[1]
Early life, education, and marriage
She was born Joan Dorothy Rothwell in the Wavertree district of Liverpool in 1920.[2] She studied dance for three years in Liverpool at the Studio School of Dance and Drama and then studied with Lydia Sokolova.[3] She won the ballet prize of the All England Dance Competition in 1937 and the Parker Trophy for Dance in 1938.[4]
She then worked as a dancer and choreographer in commercial theatre where, in 1947, she met the accountant, artist and musician, Rudolf Benesh, who noticed that she was having trouble: "During a break while I was painting Joan's portrait, I mused at her struggle to get down on paper her choreographic ideas for a ballet".[2] He began a notation to help her record her dances and they developed the system together.[2] The couple married on 12 March 1949 and she then joined the Sadler's Wells Ballet Company.[2][5]
Benesh Movement Notation
The notation uses a five bar stave to record the position of the limbs and body.[2] Above the stave, additional signs record the facial expression and the position of the eyes and fingers.[6] These details arose from Joan's special interest in Bharatanatyam – the classical dance of South India.[6] Their notation system was presented to the Royal Ballet, fully published in 1956 and exhibited at Expo 58 in Brussels.[2]
In 1960, the Royal Ballet recruited a notator who had been trained in the Benesh system.[2] The Benesh Institute of Choreology was then created in 1962 with Joan as principal, Rudolf as director and Frederick Ashton as president.[2] The Institute established a library of dance scores in London and a residential training college in Sussex.[7]
Later life
Rudolf died of cancer in 1975 and Joan then retired as principal.[2] She published a history, Reading Dance: The Birth of Choreology, in 1977 and was recognised with the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award of the Royal Academy of Dance in 1986.[1] She retired to Wimbledon where her hobbies included gardening, sewing and philosophy.[4] She subsequently moved to Skelmersdale to be near her only son Anthony.[2] She died in a nursing home there of pneumonia in 2014, aged 94.[1]
