In the current Movement Harmony Project my correspondents and I are investigating handedness – or which arm should lead when embodying different Choreutic scales. As it turns out, handedness, or chirality, is of interest to scientists as well as dancers.
Chirality is a kind of chemical handedness first discovered by Louis Pasteur. He was puzzled by the fact that crystals derived from the dregs of wine twisted light in a specific direction, but the same crystal synthesized in the lab did not.
When he examined the crystals under a microscope, he discovered that the synthetic chemical came in two mirror-image forms, which cancelled out the twisting of the light. The organic crystal from the wine had only one form.
Scientists later discovered that this chiral bias encompasses the entire living world. Synthetic chemical processes will generate both left- and right-handed molecules. But when nature makes a molecule, the product is either left-handed or right-handed.
Consequently, biologists are also interested chirality because the right- or left-handedness of a molecule affects how it interacts with other components of a cell. Molecular locks can only be opened with a key of the correct handedness.
I think this applies to Laban’s Choreutic scales. These circular progressions through the kinesphere are symmetrical forms, crystalline in character. But we as biological creatures can only unlock them with the correct handedness.