Clandestine Word. Images of Gesture Among the Arts: Pretexts and Reflections Between ImageXtext, Choreographic Notations and Didactic Transpositions

Unlike literary languages, figurative visual arts draw on body language as a medium comprising expressions, postures, gestures, and signs representing gestures. Based on a conceptualization of gesticulation as a universally intelligible form of communication, we examine dictionaries of gesticulatory movements such as that developed by Bruno Munari and the choreographic projects of Virgilio Sieni, which both entail transposing movement into images. In choreography, the act of transposition into images - conventionally signs or drawings – is termed notation and is the instrument via which artistic projects are communicated to dancers and handed down to posterity. It involves marking out an idea, knowledge, or simply a state of mind, fixing it on paper by means of a gesture. The nature of gesturing as a medium and a tool for immediate transposition underpins its valuable role in the field of education.