A series of collagraphs from my Dancing Queer History project.

Although John Playford didn’t include diagrams in The Dancing Master, many other choreographers and publishers attempted to translate dance instructions into visual forms. The most enduring strategy is known as Beauchamp-Feuillet notation, which used lines to indicate the dancer’s path, and symbols along the line to indicate their footwork. In these prints, I use a looser line and my own memory of dancing to create diagrams that live somewhere between indicative and impressionist, and which loosely trace changing dance aesthetics over time.