Beauchamp–Feuillet notation

The notation was commissioned by Louis XIV (who had founded the Académie Royale de Danse in 1661), and devised in the 1680s by Pierre Beauchamp.

The notation system was first described in detail in 1700 by Raoul-Auger Feuillet in Chorégraphie.

Feuillet also then began a programme of publishing complete notated dances.

One of the innovations of this notation was to show the music on a staff as a musician would use it, across the top of a page.

[1] The majority of the known dances are for two dancers, usually a man and a woman, and were intended to be performed at balls or on the stage.

Notation for bar of a French courante by Judith Appleby
First eight bars of a dance recorded and published by Feuillet in 1700. The roles of the two dancers, the tract they were to follow, and the steps to perform are shown, with the melody for these steps shown above.