Laban and Range of Motion

laban danceLaban’s Choreutic forms both mirror and challenge the natural range of motion of the human body.  As Laban was designing these movement sequences, he drew upon his first career as a visual artist.  It’s clear from his figure drawings that he had studied anatomy.  And he applied this knowledge in theorizing the shapes the moving limbs can trace in space.

As I note in The Harmonic Structure of Movement, Music, and Dance, Laban does not distort the proportion of the body itself.  His figure drawings faithfully adhere to a classical canon and his drawings are realistically anthropometric.

I’ve always been fascinated by this.  Laban’s first career in art straddles three modern art movements – Art Nouveau, abstract expressionism, and Dada.  Realistic representation of the human body does not characterize these movements.  Why then was Laban so faithfully realistic?

Quite simply, Laban was interested in the relationship between the body and space.  If he distorted the body’s proportions, he would also distort the trace-forms of moving limbs.  To capture the shapes of trace-forms accurately, he had to preserve normal bodily proportions and grasp joint structure and function.

Irmgard Bartenieff came to appreciate Laban’s anatomical grounding when she started to work as a physical therapist.  As she noted, “Laban’s exploration of spatial possibilities deeply affected the way I worked to stretch my stiff patients.”

There is still much to be learned from Laban’s exploration of spatial possibilities.  That is why MoveScape has offered a series of Red Thread programs this year.  The final workshop is Advanced Space Harmony workshop,  December 3 and 4.  There is still time to register.

Moving in Three Dimensions

laban movementHuman beings have big heads, and biomechanically speaking, this is a headache.  Standing up freed our arms and hands and opened new spatial horizons.  But it also means we must cope with balancing our heavy heads against the constant pull of gravity.

Irmgard Bartenieff always felt that homo sapiens are still working out the possibilities of movement in three-dimensional space.  Evolution has given us greater potential than we have figured out how to use.  And this is where Laban’s Choreutic theories come in.

The scales and rhythmic circles Laban prescribed take the mover out of safe territory – they are off-vertical, de-stabilizing, and challenging in terms of balance and range of motion. I see his Choreutic forms as puzzles to be solved at the body level.

The forthcoming Advanced Space Harmony workshop presents some of Laban’s little known Choreutic forms and invites participants to engage with these both functionally and expressively.  The aim is to create an environment for exploration of new territory.   All those who love a puzzle are welcome!

Five-rings Anyone?

choreuticLaban moved into new Choreutic territory with five-rings, and consequently they are fascinating to embody.   Primarily Laban built his space harmony scales around the cubic diagonals.  But the peripheral and transverse five-rings that Cate Deicher and I will be teaching in the Advanced Space Harmony workshop are built around the planar diameters.

The peripheral five-rings create pentagonal shapes around corners of the icosahedron that both match and challenge range of motion for gestures of the arms and legs.

The transverse five-rings trace star-like shapes around corners of the icosahedron.  These shapes stimulate new ways to think about trace-forms and areas of the kinesphere, and they can be fun to embody.

Put some stars in your kinesphere with the upcoming Ico workshop in New York City, December 3 and 4.  But hurry, registration closes November 28.

New Choreutic Forms and Movement Invention

by Cate Deicher

What kinds of choreographic impulses can open and closed Choreutic forms elicit in you?  In our Advanced Space Harmony workshop, December 3 and 4, Carol-Lynne Moore and I will be exploring the experiences of both kinds of Choreutic forms.

Laban’s Space material has always held a keen interest for me. As I undertook creative projects for dance groups and theater productions, the space material became a springboard for choreographic ideas.  Robert Ellis Dunn talked about how Laban’s scales serve to stimulate the neuromuscular system and spark compositional possibilities.  I recall working with 3-rings in his classes – 3-rings being simple closed forms – and playing with formal strategies for inventing movement material.  We re-phrased, re-ordered and re-oriented the rings to create new material, sometimes unrecognizable as a 3-ring.  But of course, that was the point.

Lately I’ve been working with open forms, like “snakes.”  Here I find myself drawn more to improvisational explorations, letting the momentum launch me into movement sequences that break wildly from the form, but feel nonetheless connected to it.

In the upcoming Ico workshop, I’ll be sharing some of these ideas for composition and improvisation, and also drawing on the work of architect Christopher Alexander.  He writes poetically about Fundamental Properties of Wholeness.  His list inspires provocative ideas for developing movement material.  I’m excited about applying these ideas to the exploration of simple and complex spatial forms to see how these might help free us from our “choreographic bags.”

The Value of Choreutic Practice

Untitled design (1)“Why are we learning this?”  Anyone who has ever taught Space Harmony will have heard this question from students.  In fact, many Certified Movement Analysts have themselves struggled with this part of Laban’s work.   But the study of Choreutics is worthwhile, and in blogs across the next two months I will explain why.

To begin with, performing well-known sequences — the Axis, Girdle, and A and B Scales — helps to develop many body-level skills.  These peripheral and transverse sequences follow oblique trajectories in the space around the body. To reach the signal points in the kinesphere prescribed by Laban, the mover must abandon the security of remaining vertically aligned (i.e., in plumb with gravity) and tilt the whole body, shifting between the cardinal planes in big movements that sweep through space.

To do so necessitates active mobilization of weight shifting through the lower body, as well as a full range of motion and the use of gradated rotation in the upper body.  And that is not all.  To execute these sequences well, the mover must establish a good upper/lower connection, integrate three-dimensional shaping through the torso, and utilized active counter-tension among the limbs.

When Laban designed these sequences nearly a hundred years ago, he wanted dancers to break out of the stasis of ballet, with its emphasis on the cardinal directions.  He certainly succeeded, for his Choreutic sequences require a synthesis of bodily skills.  Rather than finding and maintaining a fixed placement, the dancer is asked to develop a mobile balancing capacity. The reward is full access to three-dimensional space!

Challenge your own understanding of Choreutics in MoveScape Center’s “Advanced Space Harmony Workshop” in New York City in December.  Find out more….

Dance – An Art in Space and Time

MoveScape CenterThe arts are sometimes divided into spatial arts and temporal arts.

The visual arts – painting, sculpture, and architecture – are space arts. They exist as material objects that occupy two- or three-dimensional space. They are more or less enduring. And much of their appeal has to do with how they portray and/or create shapes of different kinds.

The temporal art forms – music, dance, theatre, and film – have a beginning and an ending. They occupy an instantaneous present and must be recreated afresh. A musical melody depends, not only on the notes chosen, but also on the order in which the notes are sounded. Similarly, all temporal arts rely upon a particular sequence — of sounds or actions — to convey whatever the artist intends to express.

This division of art forms is an oversimplification – for there are temporal dimensions in the spatial arts and spatial dimensions in the temporal arts. This is quite clear in dance. The dancer’s actions follow a sequential order while traversing space and creating a series of temporary shapes. Dance is an art that exists in both space and time.

Laban appreciated the dual nature of dance, recognizing its architectural nature as well as its musical aspects. The framework he created for recording dance had to address both aspects. Thus, Choreutic theory illuminates the dancer’s space. Eukinetics addresses temporal aspects such as rhythm, phrasing, and dynamics.