Korea Alphabetical Dance Notation Information Bureau, founded on October 27, Juche 111 (2022), is an official organization that integrates research, publicity, propagation and personnel training with regards to dance notation, and it is affiliated to the Ministry of Culture of the DPRK.
It has its offices in the Pyongyang International House of Culture, which is located in the centre of the capital city.
The bureau is a top-ranking institute that majors in the development of dance notation, a branch of cross-disciplinary science that links the art of dance and information technology, and it plays a very important role in the sector of arts.
In the DPRK the research into the alphabetical dance notation system started 50 years ago on the initiative of Chairman Kim Jong Il, a genius of art and literature, and with the development of information technology, it has made great strides.
When attending a middle school, he found that dance did not have a proper method of recording the movements, although literature, music and fine arts were recorded and handed down from generation to generation by letters, music score, and line and colour, respectively, and planned to have a dance notation system created. Later, he set out a task of creating such a system in the Korean way as required by the developing art of dance.
He formed a research team composed of choreographers, dancers and other related persons, providing all the necessary conditions for their work and clarifying the principle and ways for developing the system in the Korean style.
Under his warm care and wise leadership the team presented a Korean-style alphabetical dance notation system on February 9, Juche 76 (1987), which aroused a great sensation among the dancers and dance notation specialists in many countries of the world.
An international presentation of the dance notation system, hosted by UNESCO, was held in April Juche 77 (1988), drawing dancers and dance notation specialists from 15 countries, and the 10th General Assembly of the International Council of Dance was held in Pyongyang in September Juche 81 (1992), followed by an international workshop and an international presentation concerning the alphabetical dance notation system. The participants from over 80 countries recognized the originality and advantages of the system.
Based on the advantages of the system, a dance notation typewriter was developed in the DPRK in the late 1980s, followed by the invention of an electronic device for recording dance notation, which won an award from WIPO in Juche 78 (1989).
Later, the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un laid down the task of putting the alphabetical dance notation system on a highly scientific and IT level in order to exalt the brilliance of the immortal achievements made by Chairman Kim Jong Il, and gave wise leadership for its realization.
The researchers of the bureau further improved the scientific accuracy and plainness of the system by optimizing the characters of notation and their combination, and developed the choreographing app Ryultong.
The app, designed to print dance score and visualize dance movements and to aid education in dance notation, is made up of four programs–character input, dance score edition, simulation and studying.
In particular, the simulation program that integrates computer graphics, inverse kinetic, animation generation and physical simulation technologies is capable of representing the idea of a choreographer in 3D simulation on the computer.
The researchers simulated not only the Korean folk dances like Trio Dance and Nodul Riverside but also the ballets Don Quixote and Faun, verifying the system’s practicality.
They are now intensifying their research to realize automatic notation of dance movements and sustain the features of every genre of dance works by means of artificial intelligence.
