Abstract Symbolic systems such as Labanotation for notating dance and choreography provide a critical tool for the preservation of cultural heritage in what once was considered an ‘illiterate’ art form. While the goals of such notation systems are laudable, the unfortunate reality is that most dancers and choreographers cannot read or write the notation; that is, they are loath to take the considerable effort to learn a rich, but complex methodology. To make Labanotation scores more accessible the LabanDancer system has been developed to translate Labanotation scores recorded in the LabanWriter editor into 3‐d human figure animations. A major challenge in the development of this translator has been to find approaches that are general enough to create reasonable animations for a wide variety of different movements. Any translator must also take account of the context of a movement since this can affect the interpretation of the Labanotation scores. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper describes an interactive computerized editor for Benesh Movement Notation that aids in the preparation of dance scores on a medium resolution colour display. Benesh Movement Notation is a two-dimensional system for recording human movement in three dimensions of space which has been successfully used in the preparation of scores for a wide repertoire of dances. The preparation and revision of Benesh scores is a lengthy and error-prone process which interactive editing techniques can greatly facilitate. We describe the current state and future extensions of a prototype editing system in which all user interaction is based on a menu-driven scheme using a graphics tablet. Extensive visual cues including iconic trackers and semantic information are provided at all times. Both user and system initiated dialogues are supported. This system has served as a testbed for a variety of man-machine interaction studies, allowing us to transfer the wealth of experience with interactive text editing to a related task: the preparation of dance scores. The project has given us a better understanding of the issues involved in implementing an effective user-interface.