Noa Eshkol
Flying Swans / Dance Compositions in Movement Notation

The movement notation created by Noa Eshkol and Avraham Wachman in 1958 is a method that objectively maps and defines human body movements in space using geometric and mathematical principles. In the 1970s, Dita Perach, who was a student and childhood friend of Eshkol, taught the children of Kibbutz Beit Hashita movement lessons and movement notation classes based on the Eshkol-Wachman movement notation.

“When school started, Dita chose us as one of the first classes to study movement notation. Back then, movement notation was at its peak. In Russia, the Bolshoi Ballet and the Royal Ballet of Moscow worked according to the famous Labanotation, and we worked according to the Eshkol-Wachman notation, who developed a more advanced movement notation. We learned the principle of division of the parts of the body into limbs and joints such as the foot, lower leg, upper leg and up to the head. We learned the body’s movement by mapping circular movement-paths in space, like a compass. Each limb and joint moves in a circular movement in planes and plane segments and in rotation – the movement of the limb around itself. We dealt with contacts and release of contact, work in space – physical and spatial, relation between the axis and the limb, horizontal and vertical division while focusing on movement and time principle. The basic instrument was the metronome. The metronome dictates a steady rhythm and its beats create time values in an even modus.” Nir Man, Flying Swans.

Flying Swans  / Dance Compositions in Movement notation. 1970’s. 7’42 m. Documented by: Dita Perach 

“8mm Films – Children of kibbutz Beit Hashita” – collection of products – dance compositions from movement and movement notation classes under the tuition of Dita Perach. 

This collection of archival materials was assembled by the exhibition’s curators.

Noa Eshkol (1924–2007) – An Israeli artist, dance composer and theorist. In 1958, together with the architect Avraham Wachman, she developed Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation (EWMN), a system that transfers bodily movements into lines, numbers, and symbols and registers them in a grid structure, a score. Originally developed for the composition and documentation of dance, the notation functions as a set of laws according to which movements can be analyzed and notated—not unlike a musical score or a linguistic alphabet. In 1954, Eshkol founded the Noa Eshkol Chamber Dance Group to put her studies in movement into effect. Noa Eshkol grew up in a kibbutz and collective labor was always an important aspect of her work. Her private home in Holon, Israel, was—and still is—the center of collaborative study on EWMN and her dance.

Courtesy of Noa Eshkol archive for Movement Notation