Two essays on Stepanov dance notation.

The Russian dancer and teacher Vladimir Stepanov (1866 – 1896) developed a system of human movement notation based on the principles of music notation, details of which he published in French as Alphabet des Movements du Corps Humain, in Paris in 1892. It was accepted as a system of notation in both the Mariinsky and Bolshoi ballet schools and much repertory was notated in it. The dancer, choreographer and teacher Alexander Gorsky was a friend of Stepanov and an advocate of his system. In 1899 he published two long essays explaining the system in considerably more detail and with specifi c relevance to the notation of classical ballet, for use as textbooks by the students in the Mariinsky and Bolshoi schools. It is these two essays, translated and edited by the Russian ballet historian Professor Roland John Wiley which are reproduced here.