Some forms in Part 2 of Choreutics are a real departure from space harmony “business as usual.” For example, in all well-known Choreutic forms, Laban avoids using the short and long edges of the cardinal planes. These peripheral and transverse lines are either plumb with the line of gravity or perpendicular to it. Thus they are stable — and to be avoided!

Also, all the well-known Choreutic forms use the cubic diagonals as their axes.

However, in Part 2, Laban begins to employ planar edges in the trace-forms and planar diameters as axes.… Read More

The spatial sequences that Laban presents in Part 1 of Choreutics  are “rhythmic circles” – closed polygonal trace-forms that begin and end in the same spatial location. But in Part 2, Laban created open sequences that begin and end in different parts of the kinesphere.

We explored several of these open forms, notably “snakes” and “shears.”

Snakes are taken from the volutes of the A and B Scales – essentially a volute linked to the next point in the scale. They lead on in space and lend themselves to free improvisation in terms of finding a way to complete the sequence.… Read More

Last fall, a dozen brave explorers and I delved into Part 2 of Laban’s masterwork on spatial aspects of movement – Choreutics. We needed to be brave, because this part of the work presents many transverse and peripheral space harmony forms that are seldom taught today. But that is not the only, or most daunting, challenge.

Part 2 is based on a compilation of forms that Gertrud Snell Friedburg prepared as a birthday present for Laban in 1929. By this date, Laban had published the rudiments of his dance notation system.… Read More

When Laban was a military cadet, the Austro-Hungarian Empire stretched over the whole of southeast Europe and into the Balkans, embracing peoples of diverse races, nationalities, customs, and religions. To escape from his duties in the dreaded machine shop, Laban volunteered to direct a festival of cadets. This would include national dances of the various groups represented in the military academy – Germans, Hungarians, Slovaks, Poles, Bohemians, Styrians, Tyrolese, Italians, Ruthenian Russians, and Herzegovinians.

According to Laban, this idea was met with great enthusiasm, and all the cadets “wanted to bring their national characteristics into the limelight.”… Read More

Construction of Vienna’s Ringstrasse, considered the most beautiful boulevard in the world, was initiated by Emperor Franz Joseph in 1857, when the medieval fortifications were destroyed to make way for a magnificent new city center. By the time Laban entered the Officer’s Training Academy outside the city in 1899, most of the representative imperial buildings would have been complete.

Today the palaces and parks, museums and theatres, civic buildings and coffee houses still convey the quintessential light-hearted Viennese spirit of the fin de siècle period.… Read More

Bratislava sits alongside the Danube, between Budapest and Vienna. Though once the capital of Hungary, it is smaller and less magnificent than its sister cities. Still, the city center is picturesque and charming, with a cathedral and Renaissance and Baroque buildings. Its castle (shown here) overlooks the river, as did the house where Laban was born in 1879.

This fairytale setting and Laban’s imagination provided solace for what appears to have been a lonely childhood. Because there were no suitable schools in the distant border garrisons where his parents were stationed, Laban was left with extended family, where he often felt “my presence was rather superfluous.” … Read More

Our first port-of-call was Budapest, the home of Laban’s maternal grandparents. This magnificent city, often compared to Paris, straddles the Danube, with the imperial palaces in Buda and the iconic parliament building in Pest. Although severely damaged in the final days of World War II, the splendid architecture along the river has been reconstructed and must look now much as it did when Laban visited his grandparents in the late 19^th century.

Laban’s father was a career officer in the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Army.… Read More

No theory develops in a vacuum, and Rudolf Laban’s ideas are no exception. His thoughts about movement and dance were conditioned by the places and times in which he lived.

During a recent cruise on the Danube, I had the opportunity to visit the places where Laban grew up – Budapest, Bratislava, and Vienna.  All three had been capital cities within the greater Austro-Hungarian Empire, which once linked Europe and the Middle East. This multi-ethnic empire, governed by the Habsburg dynasty for over 500 years, was in the twilight of its grandeur when Laban was growing up.… Read More