Video Annotation for Dance and Performance

As an introduction to video annotation in dance, this book breaks new ground and articulates a productive vision for new digital practices of performance analysis in the 21st century. The author emphasizes the creative side of a critical praxis of annotation that can open opportunities for dance scholarship beyond notation and documentation. As the study of human movement and action has become a topic of increasing relevance over the last decade, this book contributes to a whole range of fascinating debates concerning technogenesis, technological prostheses and memory tools, video ethnography, and inscription methods of cultural heritage transmission.
—Johannes Birringer, Director, DAP-Lab
 
Video annotation for dance and performance offers an original and compelling exploration of annotation in dance. It charts the evolution, discussing the history and current place of video annotation tools in dance transmission, confidently drawing on several pertinent theories. Stancliffe makes a persuasive case for why annotation needs more attention in dance, and this is where its novelty lies: readers are taken through the mechanics of annotation as applied to some notable dance works. The book will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in how modes of annotation can reveal more about meaning in dance.
—Professor Sarah Whatley
 
This book explores video annotation as a reflective, analytic, organisational, and publishing tool for performance scholarship. On the understanding that we differentiate ourselves through the adoption of technology, annotation is introduced as a manual practice of seeing and decision-making that not only enriches or supplements time-based media but develops the analytic capacity and deep attention of human (rather than computational) subjects. This is an important book for students and scholars in dance, performance studies, media studies, and anyone working with video as a research tool.
 
Rebecca Stancliffe is a Research Fellow and Lecturer at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, UK.