Valerie Sutton (born February 22, 1951) is a developer of movement notation and a former dancer.
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 animation, as well as the theater and dance environment of Hollywood for directing her interest toward movement.
She developed the system known as Sutton Movement Writing (lately also entitled the International Movement Writing Alphabet (the IMWA), subdivided into five sections:
- DanceWriting, which records dance choreography
- SignWriting, which records signed languages
- MimeWriting, which records classic mime and gesture
- SportsWriting, which records such activities as gymnastics, ice skating, skateboarding and karate
- 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 Within a year, it became outdated as Sutton improved her system.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 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.