Vladimir Ivanovich Stepanov (*1866, † 1896), dancer at the Imperial Ballet in Saint Petersburg. In 1892 he published a dance notation with the title L'Alphabet des Mouvements du Corps Humain. This Alphabet of Movements of the Human Body is a notation that encodes dance movements with musical notes and not with pictographs or newly invented abstract symbols. Stepanov breaks complex movements down to elementary moves which single parts of the body can make. These basic moves are then encyphered as musical signs.