Movement Notation

The KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin presents the publication of a new print edition of Movement Notation (1958) by artist, choreographer, and dance theorist Noa Eshkol and architect Avraham Wachman. The new print edition was initiated by curator Krist Gruijthuijsen, Director of the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, in collaboration with the Noa Eshkol Foundation for Movement Notation, following his participation in an Artis Curatorial Seminar (2022), and supported by an Artis Research Grant. 

Movement Notation is considered to be the first publication that documents the Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation (EWMN), a polyphonic notation system for dance that Eshkol developed with Wachmann to document and study the movement of the human body. Each body part is treated as a separate instrument, each with its own rules and scope of movements to be performed. The publication was edited by Mor Bashan and Krist Gruijthuijsen, and includes contributions from Eshkol’s companions, alongside archive material that contextualizes the history and origins of the EWMN, embedding it in contemporary discourses on dance and movement.