Like many sheltering in place, I have aspired to use this “down time” to tidy my office.  And yes, I have read Marie Kondo. But my next reading recommendation, goodbye, things by Fumio Sasaki, out kondos Kondo.

Fumio Sasaki, a writer in his thirties, lives in a tiny studio in Tokyo with three shirts, four pairs of trousers, four pairs of socks and not much else.  He claims there is happiness in having less.

As I look around my office, or my house, I would like to have less. … Read More

One will meet no finer evocation of the uncanny than The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton.  Wharton is an American writer best known for her novels about the upper class society into which she was born in the late 19^th century.  Her ghost stories, however, draw more on her subtle nature as a “ghost-feeler, the person sensible of invisible currents of being in certain places and at certain hours.”

According to Wharton, what a ghost needs is silence and continuity – “for where a ghost has once appeared it seems to hanker to appear again; and it obviously prefers the silent hours.”… Read More

For escapist humor, you cannot go wrong with any novel by P.G. Wodehouse.  Set in the English countryside in the 1920s, his finely-plotted stories gently parody the British upper class, creating a cast of unforgettable characters.

Among these are Jeeves, the butler, and his clueless employer, Bertie Wooster.  Inevitably, Bertie becomes embroiled in a hilarious predicament.  But, as in Right Ho, Jeeves, the highly intelligent butler always finds a way to extricate Bertie.

As Evelyn Waugh rightly notes, “Mr. Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale. … Read More

Vicarious travel is still possible and my recommendation is Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz. Part history, part travelogue, the book recounts Horwitz’s adventures following Captain James Cook’s epic voyages exploring the Pacific Ocean in the late 1700s.

Horwitz begins his own journey by working as a sailor on a replica of Cook’s ship, providing a vivid picture of the hardships encountered by the crew. Drawing on Cook’s journals, he creates a brilliant portrait of the impoverished Yorkshire farmboy who couldn’t swim, yet became the greatest navigator in British history.… Read More

During a pandemic, some find solace in comfort food.  I find solace in comfort reading.  So my first vacation reading selection is Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.

Yes, I know it’s a book for children.  But it is also a timeless tale of the pleasures of home, the lure of adventure, and the consolation of friendship in times of plenty and times of need.

There is also the beauty of Grahame’s language.  When the Mole, tired of spring cleaning, ventures out into the great world, he encounters a river for the first time – “All was a-shake and a-shiver – glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble. … Read More

Right now, real life is deadly serious.  It’s summer vacation time, but that darned virus just won’t give up!

So I’m staying home and taking a holiday – from reality.

Consequently, you won’t learn anything about Laban, Bartenieff, or Movement Pattern Analysis in the next blogs.  Instead, my suggestions for escapist reading follow.… Read More

In the shape of the circle Leonardo da Vinci perceived a correct pattern for bodily movements, for the limbs circle around their joints.  Rudolf Laban agreed, noting that most movements are curvilinear.  But he turned Leonardo’s circles into “rhythmic circles.”

Rhythmic circles are polygons – circles in which there is a spatial rhythm.  As Laban explains, “A triangle accentuates three points in the circumference of circle… a pentagon five points.  Each accent means break of the circuit line, and the emergence of a new direction.”… Read More

Thanks to the corona virus, we are all thinking a lot nowadays about the “spaces between” – social distances between ourselves and others and wistful distances between where we are and where we’d like to be.

Laban also thought a lot about the “spaces between.”

It was the spaces between “signal points” in the kinesphere that were significant for Laban. He saw these as analogous to tonal intervals in music. Just as composers use tonal relationships to write melodies and chords, Laban used spatial intervals to create harmonic movement sequences.… Read More

Now more than ever, we need room to move.  Fortunately, the kinesphere is always with us.  “Kinesphere” is the name Rudolf Laban coined for the spherical bubble of empty space surrounding the body.  The “kinesphere” is defined it as the space that can be reached without taking a step.  You don’t have to go anywhere to enjoy it, for as Laban noted, “We never leave our movement sphere but carry it always with us, like an aura.”

To help the mover explore his or her kinesphere, Laban created imaginary landmarks in this empty bubble of space. … Read More

Several years ago I drew on several space harmony sequences to facilitate my recovery from back surgery.

Naturally, prior to and following the surgery, I was in physical therapy, where most of the prescribed exercises were repetitive, two-dimensional actions.  Finally it occurred to me that I could repeat these exercises forever without being rehabilitated for movement in three-dimensions.  That is when I began to use Choreutics for movement invention.

For example, I was prescribed a series of “nerve flossing” exercises for the legs done lying supine. … Read More