Benesh for Ballet: Book 3

Rymans’ Benesh for Ballet series teaches you how to read Benesh Movement Notation (BMN) using words, images, animations, and notated examples. The interactive features and reviews challenge you to learn BMN theory while brushing up on ballet vocabulary and pedagogy.


This is the third book in this series. Book 1 introduces the fundamental concepts of BMN. You'll learn to read basic ballet positions from three "schools" of ballet: English, Italian, and Russian. Book 2 presents the five basic categories of jumps so you can explore allegro steps and sequences without travel, timed to music. In Book 3 new BMN theory will prepare you to read notated examples of centre work and repeated sequences. You’ll explore how a basic dance phrase can be repeated in a variety of ways: the same, other side, alternating sides, or reverse. By reading phrases repeated with slight differences, you’ll learn to recognize the structure of a basic phrase and understand how it can be varied, which explains the term “ballet variation.”