Home > Valerie Sutton

She was born in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City, the daughter of a physicist father and a poet/ model mother. She has an older sister Pam, a doctor of medicine.

At the age of six months, she moved with her family to Corning, New York, the home of the Corning Glass Works, where her father became a physicist. She lived in Corning until the age of eight years, and then moved to Corona del Mar, a part of Newport Beach, California. She spent the rest of her childhood in Corona del Mar, and as an adult moved to the San Diego, California area, where she has since lived. Her current home is in the San Diego suburb of La Jolla.

In California, she credits the influence of Disney animationThis animation moves at 10 frames per second. This animation moves at 2 frames per second. At this rate, the individual frames should be discernable. Animation refers to the process in which each frame of a film or movie is produced individually, whether, as well as the theater and dance environment of HollywoodFor other uses, see Hollywood (disambiguation Hollywood is a district of the City of Los Angeles, California, U. that runs from about Vermont Avenue on the east to just beyond Laurel Canyon Boulevard above Sunset and Crescent Heights Boulevards on the wes for directing her interest toward movement.

She developed the system known as Sutton Movement Writing, subdivided into five sections:

1. DanceWritingDanceWriting is a form of Dance notation. Developed in 1972 by Valerie Sutton it is part of a greater body of work called MovementWriting or the International Movement-Writing Alphabet DanceWriting uses figurative and abstract symbols on a five staff stav, which records dance choreographyChoreography (also known as dance composition) is the art of making structures in which movement occurs, the term composition may also refer to the navigation or connection of these movement structures. The resulting movement structure may also be referre
2. SignWritingSign Writing is a system of writing the movements and handshapes of sign languages. It was developed in 1974 by Valerie Sutton, a dancer who had two years earlier developed Dance Writing. As Sutton was teaching DanceWriting to the Royal Danish Ballet, Lar, which records signed languagesA sign language is a language which uses gestures instead of sound to convey meaning combining handshapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, facial expressions and lip-patterns. Sign languages are usually developed in deaf communities,
3. MimeWriting, which records classic mimeA mime is the representation of action, character or mood using only gestures and movements rather than words, or the actor in such a performance, specifically a mimic or pantomimist. David Bowie was a mime before finding success as a singer. To mime is a and gesture
4. SportsWriting, which records such activities as gymnastics, ice skating, and karate
5. ScienceWriting, which records physical therapy, body language, animal movements, and other forms of movement

DanceWriting was first developed in 1966, when Sutton was only 15, training as a professional ballet dancer. She invented a stick figure notation for her own personal use. Four years later she went to Copenhagen, Denmark to train with the Royal Danish Ballet. Over the next two years she applied her system to recording the historic ballet steps of the Royal Danish Ballet, which were in danger of being forgotten from lack of recording. The first DanceWriting textbook, Sutton Movement Shorthand, The Classical Ballet Key, Key One, was produced in December, 1973. Within a year, it became outdated as Sutton improved her system. In the fall of 1974, by special invitation, she taught her system to the members of the RDB.

In 1974, articles about Sutton's DanceWriting system came to the attention of sign language researchers at the University of Copenhagen, and they asked for a demonstration. As a result, Lars van der Leith and others at the Audiologopædisk Forskningsgruppe of the University of Copenhagen requested Sutton to develop a version of her movement notation adapted to the recording of sign languages. As a result, SignWriting was developed; it has been used for writing not only Danish Sign Language , but the private sign language of a deaf South Pacific islander (in 1975), and, most important, American Sign Language.

Sutton has continually worked to improve her notation systems and now leads the Center For Sutton Movement Writing, Inc. to spread her system.