Beauchamp–Feuillet notation

Beauchamp–Feuillet notation is a system of dance notation used in Baroque dance.

First eight bars of a dance recorded and published by Feuillet in 1700. The roles of the two dancers, the tract they were to follow, and the steps to perform are shown.

Notation for bar of a French courante by Judith Appleby

The notation was commissioned by Louis XIV (who had founded the Académie Royale de Danse in 1661), and devised in the 1680s by Pierre Beauchamp. The notation system was first described in detail in 1700 by Raoul-Auger Feuillet in Chorégraphie. Feuillet also then began a programme of publishing complete notated dances. It was used to record dances for the stage and domestic use throughout the eighteenth century, being modified by Pierre Rameau in 1725, and surviving into at least the 1780s in various modified forms.

One of the innovations of this notation was to show the music on a staff as a musician would use it, across the top of a page. Bar markings on the music are also drawn across the tract of the dancers, clarifying the relation of the steps to the music. The focus of the notation is the footwork. The notation shows the sequence of foot moves, and, for each move, the direction, the manner of executing the step, and the relative timing of the moves. There is enough detail that dancing masters, in other places and times, could reconstruct the dance and teach it from the notation alone. There are over 300 notated dances known.[1] The majority of the known dances are for two dancers, usually a man and a woman, and were intended to be performed at balls or on the stage.[1]