Dancing Art Nouveau

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In his first career as a visual artist, Laban was closely involved in the Art Nouveau movement.  Literally meaning “new art,” Art Nouveau was a self-consciously modern movement focused on the applied arts rather than the fine arts.  The movement expressed itself in innovations in architecture, furniture, fabric, dishes, lamps, jewelry – redesigning the everyday objects that people use and the spaces they inhabit.  

In short, Art Nouveau aimed to break with tradition and change the shape of the modern world.

As Laban’s career shifted from art to dance, he had to confront the stable formality of traditional ballet.  In keeping with the aims of Art Nouveau, the new dance had to break away from the past and explore modern ways of moving.  For Laban, this involved experimenting with novel lines of motion, ones that challenged the dancer’s balance yet preserved a rhythmic oscillation between stability and mobility.  

By the end of the 1920’s, Laban had designed many new patterns for dancing.  These veered away from static geography of ballet and opened new territories for exploration of the kinesphere by drawing entirely on deflected directions.

Find out more in the upcoming course, “Decoding Choreutics: Part 2.”

Laban’s “Deflected Direction” Hypothesis

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Dimensions = stability and diagonals = mobility. Yet, according to Laban, “neither pure stability nor pure mobility exist.”  Natural human movement “is a composite of stabilizing and mobilizing tendencies.”

What is going on here?  Laban has taken a lot of trouble to delineate the dimensional and diagonal lines of motion.  And every Laban student, whether in a basic or advanced course, practices dimensional and diagonal sequences over and over again.  

Then Laban surprises us with the “deflected direction hypothesis.”  All of a sudden, he observes that “the deflected or mixed inclinations are more apt to reflect trace-forms of living matter.”

Laban’s critical observation of living movement is all-too-easily overlooked.  We know from principles of Gestalt psychology that the mind opts for rapid closure. We may perceive an unfinished circle that is not quite round.  But the mind conceives a perfect circle.

Analogously, Laban went beyond the rapid closure of dimensions and diagonals, delineating a variety of deflected lines of movement that fill the kinesphere.  Exploring these deflected directions offers a host of new bodily experiences in relation to space, gravity, and kinetic energy. Find out more in the upcoming MoveScape seminar, “Decoding Choreutics: Part 2.”

A Bird’s Eye View of the LIMS Conference

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A bird flying over Manhattan in early June would have detected several hot spots of movement activity and collegial exchange. Sites for the Laban Institute conference ranged from Hunter College on the upper east side, to midtown near Bryant Park, to Washington Square Park in the West Village.

With as many as four sessions running concurrently and over 200 participants, it is impossible to provide an encyclopedic report on the conference as a whole. Some highlights for me were the following sessions.

Bird's-Eye-View-LIMS-Conference

* Learning about Laban Movement Analysts’ founding role in the creation of “Global Water Dances” – an international biannual event using dance as an international language to raise awareness of local water issues and the impending global water shortage.

* The panel on dance/movement therapy featuring Nancy Beardall, Katya Bloom, Jane Cathcart, and Suzi Tortora – all seasoned movement analysts and therapists. Here was one session that really captured how this field is maturing.

*  The EcoPoetic site-based dance event in Washington Square Park masterfully organized by LIMS Executive and Artistic Director, Regina Miranda.  Seventeen different dance performances were scattered throughout the northeast corner of the park, transforming the area into a sunlit scene in which dancers and strolling passerbys gracefully melded in the mild evening.

* Anastasi Siotas’s workshop on biotensegrity as an emerging model of anatomical structure.

* And, carrying the theme of tensegrity further, Mary Copple gave a super paper on her experiences integrating Laban-Bartenieff work in the Architecture and Design Program at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany.

More conference highlights in the next blog!

LIMS Turns 40!

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The Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies (LIMS) celebrated its 40th anniversary with a fabulous conference in New York City in early June. This international gathering was an embarrassment of riches, with fascinating workshops, panels, papers, and dance events.  

LIMS-Turns-40

Forty years ago, I was part of the Founding Board of the Institute, and I remember clearly our first conference in 1979 (celebrating the centennial of Laban’s 1879 birth). We were a young group of founders, enthusiastic and somewhat inexperienced.   But in 1979, many of Laban’s colleagues were still active. We managed to bring many of these “big names” in movement study over from Europe – Lisa Ullmann, Sylvia Bodmer, Warren Lamb, Geraldine Stephenson, Anna Markard (Kurt Jooss’s daughter), Martin Gleisner, and, of course, our inspiration-in-residence, Irmgard Bartenieff.

We looked up to these pioneers, as many of us were just beginning careers.

Forty years later, not only have the LIMS founders matured, the whole field has matured.  It is nice to find that, while we retain a youthful enthusiasm about the study of human movement, we are now a group of maturing professionals, with years of experience applying Laban Movement Analysis in many ways. Find out more about how Laban movement studies are growing up in the next blogs.

The Icosahedron Revealed

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As my imaginary conversation with Laban progresses, he begins to share more deeply.

CLM:  I always suspected there was more to your choice of the icosahedron as a model of the kinesphere.  Please go on.

R.Laban:  You see, the icosahedron isn’t found in any crystalline forms. That is, it isn’t found in inorganic matter.  But some microscopic organisms have icosahedral shapes – it is one of the shapes nature chooses for living forms.

Icosaheadron-Devealed

CLM: Why is that important?

R. Laban:  Because life curves, and most trace-forms of human movement are curvilinear.

CLM:  Yet in Choreutics you write that “We can understand all bodily movement as being a continuous creation of fragments of polyhedral forms.”  Polyhedra have straight edges and angular corners….

R. Laban:  You mustn’t take everything I write so literally.  Movement is curvilinear, but in order to create a geography for the kinesphere, I had to use geometrical forms.  By conceptualizing trace-forms as rhythmic circles; that is, as polygons, these shapes can be matched to the geometric geography of the kinesphere.

CLM:  I think I’m beginning to understand.

R. Laban:  You see, my polygonal trace-forms are stylizations of the organic curves of human movement.  I’ve simply done what visual artists do when they take the curved shape of a leaf or a flower and geometricize it.  They create a pattern.

CLM:  That’s what you’re doing, then. You are imposing a pattern on the curves of living movement.

R. Laban:  That’s exactly right. Without pattern, the movement just disappears as it is occurring.  By geometricizing trace-forms and the geography of the kinesphere, I’ve provided some “fixed points” so that dance and movement can be objects for contemplation and study.

CLM:  Now I think I really need that cool drink!

Laban Clarifies the Geography of the Kinesphere

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As my imaginary conversation with Laban continued, the topic of the icosahedron came up.

CLM:  Let’s talk more about the kinesphere.

Laban-Geography-Kinesphere

R.Laban:  Think of it as the bubble of territory surrounding your whole body – the space you can reach with your limbs without taking a step.

CLM:  Does this movement space have a shape?  Is it a sphere?

RL:  Ideally yes.  But I needed to give it a more definitive shape, with some landmarks the dancer or mover could use for orientation. Eventually, I chose the icosahedron.

CLM:  I know that’s one of the Platonic solids.  There are only five of these regular polyhedra, and they were all known to the Greeks.   However, the icosahedron is not the most familiar one because it isn’t found in nature. Why did you pick the icosahedron?

RL: Well, the cube is probably the most familiar shape, but it isn’t very spherical.  The icosahedron comes much closer. And if you set it on an edge, the twelve corners, the edges, and the internal rays can be used as a kind of longitude and latitude for mapping movement.

CLM:  So you use the icosahedron to create a geography for movement space.  That’s amazing.

RL:  There’s a lot more to it….

CLM:  I’m sure there is, but let’s get something cool to drink!

Laban and I Discuss Trace-Forms

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CLM: I’ve read that Leonardo da Vinci was interested in “the second form of the human body” – that is, the lines traced by moving limbs on the space around the body.  He visualized these forms as circles. Were you aware of that?

R. Laban:  Not exactly.  But again, circles have been used in figure drawing to help with capturing the figure in motion.

CLM:  But your circles are “rhythmic.”   What exactly does that mean?

Laban-Trace-Forms

RL:  A circle lends itself to continuous motion.  That’s why it is often used to symbolize eternity.  I’m interested in analyzing the changing movement of the human body.  I needed something that involved time, something that broke up the smooth and uniform motion of the circle.  That’s a rhythmic circle.

CLM: A rhythmic circle is actually a polygon, isn’t it?

RL:  Right.   Polygons are still circles in the sense that they are closed forms.  But a triangle accentuates three points in the circumference of a circle, a square, four points, and so on.  Each accent means a rhythmic break and a slight change in direction.

CLM:  You also related these polygonal rhythms of the moving body to “the ever-circling motions in the universe.”  I’m not sure what this means.

RL:  Geometry has metaphysical aspects.  But more practically, I had to relate the rhythmic circles traced by the body to the space around the body.   I called that space the kinesphere. It’s our personal universe, the only universe in which we really are the center of all the action.

CLM:   So are you saying that the body is at the center of all we do?

RL:  There is no action without movement. But the body isn’t the only thing that moves.  Thoughts and feelings move as well.  Movement is the action of both body and mind!

World of Movement, World of Wonder

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Guest blog by Juliet Chambers-Coe

Laban characterized the dynamic yet ephemeral world of movement as “a jungle of sudden appearances and disappearances, a glistening and colorful wonder-world which awaits exploration.”

Girl-in-Flowers

The www.Labanarium.com  is a part of this ‘jungle’ and ‘wonder-world’ of which Laban speaks.  Members from across the globe meet through the network to share practice, ideas, research and inspirations from the world of movement, and it awaits your exploration!

In the spirit of movement and dance theorist Rudolf Laban, the Labanarium seeks to foster an exchange between members of the movement community and is open to the breadth and diversity of practices that explore all human movement.

Anyone can become a Member of the Labanarium – it’s free to join https://www.labanarium.com/register/

Benefits of membership:

  • connect to others in the movement community
  • have access to resource pages including Podcasts
  • create your own Group and invite others to join
  • get your activities featured on ‘Featured Contributors’ page
  • promote your events
  • increase your visibility in the field
  • engage in Laban theory with expert, established practitioner members
  • receive newsletters, articles, event invitations via the free mailing list subscription
  • participate in forum discussions

Check out some of our community’s expert contributions so far: https://www.labanarium.com/featured-contributors/

Laban reminds us that “dance is never the end of a development, it much rather seems to indicate the beginning of an unfolding…it is the spring-time of a new period….”

 

So, come to ‘jungle’ and have a look around, and join us in the unfolding of new beginnings in movement and dance!

The Labanarium – A Global Community

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Guest blog by Juliet Chambers-Coe.

In A Life for Dance, Laban recounts how he set about developing an artistic community of shared practice and ideals:

“To participate creatively in this great community idea and in the festive spirit which should be the goal and supreme aspiration of every culture…the daily building up of the communal culture which should culminate in festivities and celebrations and be intimately bound up with the development of the self…I asked all those who were sympathetic with my views to come and help realize this dreamed of way of life somewhere in the open country” (Laban, 1975).

People-in-Circle

Whilst many of us do not have the luxury of time, space and resources for developing such a community in the ‘open country’, the post-modern era in which we now live has provided us with other ways of coming together and for more of us connect worldwide across geographic, institutional and cultural borders.

The Labanarium offers such a community space, where members can develop the self within a supportive like-minded community of movement and dance practitioners and scholars.

The Labanarium is an international resource and network center for the movement community encompassing movement practices of any discipline. In the spirit of Rudolf Laban, the Labanarium seeks to foster an openness to the breadth and diversity of approaches to the practice and study of human movement as a psychophysical phenomenon.  

Founded in January 2017, the Labanarium is now one year old. In the past twelve months, we have seen members of the Labanarium community create performances, research events, create and attend workshops, record podcasts, ask questions and connect through movement, on the network and via the mailing list.

Membership is free of charge with only one requirement – an interest in human movement and an openness to the breadth and diversity of approaches that seek to explore it.

So why not join us and check out what is going on in your community, you are very welcome… www.labanarium.com

Beyond Motus Humanus

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In 1991, Kaoru Yamamoto, Charlotte Honda and I founded Motus Humanus – a professional organization dedicated to supporting the development of Laban-based movement study.

Man-Jumping-Mountain

Over the next 25 years, Motus Humanus provided networking opportunities and continuing education for movement analysts, supported research and publication, honored professional achievement, and created a community for Laban-based movement specialists.

Now Juliet Chambers-Coe has created the Labanarium – a 21st century vehicle for the movement community.  New technology opens up exciting avenues of communication and new possibilities for interaction and collaboration.

Find out more in the next guest blogs!