Conceiving bodily motions as lines in space allowed Laban to link his visual art background with his study of dance.

Art Nouveau artists not only had a deep interest in the expressive qualities of line, they also linked this expressivity to the body.  For example, in asking how architectural forms can convey an emotion or a mood, the Swiss aesthetician Heinrich Wolfflin, argued that “Physical forms possess a character only because we ourselves possess a body.”

The architect August Endell went even further in ascribing empathic, body-based reactions to straight and curved lines, thick and thin lines, and the direction of the line. … Read More

In Labanotation, bodily gestures are recorded as linear trace-forms having a definable starting and ending destination.  In contrast, bodily supports in locomotion are written as motion away from a starting location.

In Labanotation, Ann Hutchinson Guest distinguishes destination from motion in the following way.

“In traveling from Rome to London, one is moving between two fixed points in the world.  The direction happens to be a northwesterly one, but the traveler need not be aware of this.’’

“A traveler starting on a northwesterly path from Rome may not know what his goal is; he may only know his direction in relation to his starting point.”  … Read More

Laban found trace-forms could be recorded by visualizing them as lines occurring within a geometricized kinesphere.  He also felt this form of representation was lacking something.

As the French philosopher Henri Bergson noted, one can move one’s hand from point A to point B, inscribing a line which can infinitely divided into a series of stationary points or positions.  This imposes stillnesses on flux.

Instead, the movement creates “the inward feeling of a single act, for in A was rest, in B there is again rest, and between A and B is placed an undivided act, the passage from rest to rest which is movement itself.”… Read More

The imaginary lines of longitude and latitude make it possible to navigate on the open seas.  In a similar way, Laban used the edges and corners of regular polyhedra to provide landmarks for tracking the pathways of moving limbs in the trackless space around the body.

This clever innovation allows for the movement of bodily gestures to be recorded as a line in space having a particular starting and ending point, with reference to a geometrical scaffolding of the kinesphere.… Read More

The limbs move through the space around the body, creating lines and shapes that disappear even as the movement is occurring.  But what if the joints of the limbs, like little jet engines, left a vapor trail, allowing the movement trajectories to be seen, recorded, and studied?

This is what Rudolf Laban had in mind when he coined the term “trace-forms”to refer to the imaginary vapor trails inscribed by the moving limbs on the space around the body.  His next challenge was to find a way to record these trace-forms so that they could be reconstructed from a notation score, just as the shape of a melody can be reproduced from a musical score.… Read More