1955 – Rudolf and Joan Benesh present The Benesh System (now the Benesh Movement Notation)

Rudolf Benesh was born in 1916 and became a qualified accountant, having also read Fine Art at Wimbledon College of Art and Music. He married Joan Rothwell in 1949. Rothwell was born in Liverpool in 1920 and studied with Lydia Sokolova, joining the Sadler’s Wells Ballet in 1951. From 1947, the pair began a period of collaborative development to devise a system of dance notation that could be widely adopted, presenting their work in September 1955 at the Royal Opera House. A publication, entitled An Introduction to Benesh Dance Notation, was circulated in 1958, complemented by the system’s inclusion in the British government’s pavilion of Technology and Scientific Discovery at that year’s Brussels Exposition. A teaching syllabus was developed and, in 1960, Faith Worth became The Royal Ballet’s first professional notator. Benesh Movement Notation is widely used today by ballet companies all over the world to record and stage works. In 2018 the Institute was rebranded as Benesh International. Rudolf Benesh died in 1975 and Joan Benesh died in 2014.