Author Archives: Carol-Lynne Moore

The Iconic Irmgard Bartenieff

Posted on by

When I first studied Laban Movement Analysis with Irmgard Bartenieff, I was in my early 20s and she was in her mid-70s.  Like all of the other young students, I regarded her with a certain amount of awe.

Irmgard had an extraordinary resume.  Not only had she studied with Rudolf Laban in Germany in the fertile and exciting 1920s, she had gone on to work as a movement professional in an amazing array of fields – dance, physical therapy, visual anthropology, child development research, and dance/movement therapy. … Read More

Warren Lamb, Creative Pioneer

Posted on by

Warren Lamb is one of the most creative people I have ever known.  His creativity is likely to escape the casual observer, for Lamb is very much the proper Englishman and his long and successful career as a management consultant has led him to adopt a conventional façade.  Moreover, he is inclined to stand modestly in the shadow of his mentor, Rudolf Laban, who is widely recognized as a creative genius.

However, without Lamb’s contribution to the study of human movement, Laban’s own reputation would be diminished. … Read More

Rudolf Laban, Revolutionary

Posted on by

Around 1913, a visual artist named Rudolf Laban gave up painting to pursue a career in dance.  He admitted he seemed to have chosen “the most despised profession.”  At the time, dance was the poor relation of all the other arts.  Laban set out to change that.

Over the next 25 years, he performed, choreographed, and taught – activities familiar to most professional dancers.  But Laban’s efforts went beyond this.  He wrote about dance, he organized a dancers’ union, he initiated dance conferences, and he inspired a populist dance movement for amateur performers.… Read More

Thinking and Moving

Posted on by

It used to be so simple.  I believed that I thought with my head and moved with, well, the rest of me.  So it came as a surprise when my high school ballet teacher used to admonish the class to “Think!”   And so I would think – about the homework I had to do, about dinner, about weekend plans.  Not surprisingly, these thoughts didn’t do much to enhance my dance technique.

Then one day it dawned on me. I wasn’t just supposed to be doing things with my body. … Read More

I Move, Therefore, I Am

Posted on by

Movement is the essence of being. Human conception itself depends upon motion, the joining of egg and sperm. The health of the developing fetus is judged in part by its motion. And before the newborn can shape a thought, it expresses its needs by moving.

Descartes was half-right – self-reflective thought is uniquely human. But bodily movement is older than thought.

Movement is decisive. Movement, not thought, separates the quick and the dead, the animate and inanimate.

“Science tells us that motion is an essential of existence,” Rudolf Laban observed.… Read More