Admittedly, Part 1 of Laban’s Choreutics is pretty tough going for readers. But Part 2 is even tougher for several reasons. While Laban wrote Part 1 in 1938-39, Part 2 was compiled by Gertrud Snell Friedburg ten years earlier, in 1929. When Lisa Ullmann edited Laban’s Part 1 manuscript, she decided to add Part 2. So, the tone of the writing changes. But that’s not all!
The “basic movement scales and configurations” that are discussed in Part 2 do not use the Labanotation direction symbols Instead, Friedburg used an earlier system of numbers and letters to notate the pathways through space. Ullmann partially annotated these with the familiar direction symbols. But in many sections, only the original code is used. This makes it impossible for a contemporary reader to follow the discussion and examples without “breaking the code” and then painstakingly translating the sequences.
So, I’ve taken on this challenge. Here’s why. These “scales and configurations” must have been taught by Laban during the 1920s – that’s why Friedburg compiled them! But these don’t get taught today – because they’re unreadable.
But just because they’re incomprehensible doesn’t mean that they are meaningless.
Quite the contrary, the scales and configurations in Part 2 represent Laban’s thorough investigation of the deflected directions. These Choreutic forms are made up entirely of transverse and peripheral pathways. They have the potential to greatly extend Choreutic theory and practice.
Find out more this fall, when “Decoding Choreutics: Part 2” begins in October.