I find Laban’s Mastery of Movement insightful and inspiring – but it is not an easy read. Chapters 2 and 3 alone can be daunting. Over the course of 60 pages, Laban introduces the reader to the analysis of simple and complex bodily movements through verbal descriptions and short movement notations (added by Lisa Ullmann). The reader is meant to get up and perform these movement sequences, which is not an easy task!
That is why having a guide and a correspondent helps. … Read More
Some of the most thought-provoking statements by Laban are found in the first chapter of Mastery of Movement. Here are several of my favorites….
“Man’s body-mind produces many kinds of qualities. He can jump like a deer, and, if he wishes, like a cat.”
“Besides the comparative richness of human effort capacity, one can notice an effort speciality which might be called humane effort… effort capable of resisting the influence of inherited or acquired capacities.”
“It is perhaps not too bold to introduce here the idea of thinking in terms of movement. … Read More
Laban’s The Mastery of Movement on the Stage is about meaning. In the opening sentence of the book, Laban observes that “man moves to satisfy a need,” and he notes that these needs can be tangible or intangible. Here, in a nutshell, is a whole theory of human motivation and its intrinsic relation to bodily movement.
We cannot directly see another person’s motives, but we can deduce these from the way a person moves. In the theatre, or in everyday life, we come to know characters and their objectives, not only by what they say, but by how they say it and the bodily actions that accompany those words and tones.… Read More
Laban did some of his most important work during the last two decades of his life. He extended his study of movement beyond dance – to physical and mental labor, movement for actors, physical education for children, and even psychotherapy.
Each time Laban turned his eyes to a different arena of human activity, he developed his ideas. And he wrote a book – Effort, The Mastery of Movement on the Stage, Modern Educational Dance, and Effort and Recovery (which remains unpublished).… Read More
In Choreutics, Laban relates human movement to a dizzying array of subjects – Pythagoras, crystals, Lissajous curves, symmetry, musical semitones, lemniscates, cuboctahedra, the Golden Mean. Consequently, for each reading assignment in the “Decoding Choreutics” course, I provide a written Commentary to help participants understand the wide-ranging relationships Laban mentions.
Dance historian Walter Sorrell claims that Laban was “a voracious reader whose thirst for knowledge embraced everything from religion and philosophy to literature and science.” This is because artistic and scientific circles overlapped to a much greater extent during Laban’s lifetime than is now the case.… Read More
MoveScape Center has run “Decoding Choreutics” twice – once in 2016 and again in 2017. Over 40 students on four continents have taken the course. Here is what they say about the experience.
“This has been a wonderful re-connecting with Laban’s teaching.”
“The questions were the perfect assistant in helping me to form clear understandings of Laban’s writings.”
“The pace was lovely and kept me fully engaged from week to week.”
“When reading Choreutics on my own, I often felt either inspired or frustrated. … Read More
Laban wrote Choreutics during 1938-39, while convalescing at Dartington Hall in England. He intended for the book to introduce his ideas to the English reading public. Then World War II broke out. The resident artists at Dartington Hall were dispersed, and Laban gave the manuscript to his Dartington benefactors for safe keeping. The manuscript was only rediscovered and published in 1966, after Laban’s death.
When Laban wrote Choreutics, he had not yet invented the symbols for effort notation. Consequently, he had to use spatial direction symbols, amended with a small “s,” to represent effort qualities and combinations.… Read More
Coming in early March — MoveScape Center again offers a unique opportunity to study Rudolf Laban’s masterpiece, Choreutics !
In this inspirational work, Laban articulates his understanding of the physical and metaphysical dimensions of human movement. And although his presentation is logical, many parts of the book are difficult to grasp.
That is why I have developed this correspondence course. Together with me over six weeks, participants read the first 12 chapters – though not necessarily in numerical order. Here’s why.… Read More
Learning to paint has interesting parallels with learning to observe movement. These similarities are fascinating in themselves. For me, however, the greatest reward of learning to paint is the way it enriches my visual experience of the world.
Colorado can be very sere in the winter, when the leaves fall and the fields turn a dusty brown. Fortunately, we enjoy many sunny days. And when light touches the trees, the branches glow orange or pale lavender. Some shrubs appear to be magenta; some grasses, pale yellow. … Read More
As a beginning art student, I’m in awe of my painting teacher. His work is work is so accomplished, his demonstrations so sure that I assume painting is easy for him. Beginners always assume that the activity, whatever it is, becomes easy for the expert. And this is where we make a mistake.
I’m an experienced movement observer and presumably an expert Movement Pattern Analyst. But that doesn’t mean that observing is easy for me. Every time I begin an interview with a new person for whom I will prepare a movement profile, I pass through the vale of doubt. … Read More