Around 1913, Rudolf Laban abandoned his career as a visual artist to enter the field of dance. At the time, dance was a discipline defined more by what it lacked than by what it offered. Laban focused his energies on altering such conditions.
He championed the cause of dance: as a profession, as a recreative lay activity, and as a mode of education. He created a flexible dance notation system that allows works of various genre to be recorded and restaged. He performed; he choreographed. Above all, he wrote and published.
A century later, dance is no longer a discipline lacking literature, recorded history, scholarship, or theory. This is due in part to Laban’s vision and Herculean efforts to capture movement’s traces in written forms. Consequently, I was very happy when two of Laban’s major works, The Mastery of Movement and Choreutics, which had been out-of-print, became available once more.
Now I want to encourage movement specialists to read these classics. To that end, MoveScape Center is offering a year of seminars exploring Laban’s Choreutics by reading, reflecting, and moving.
This year of exploration begins in March, with a six week “Great Books” course, “Decoding Laban’s Choreutics.” Participants can take this correspondence course without leaving the comfort of home. But not without leaving a comfy chair.
Prior to each reading assignment, participants will receive a set of orienting questions. Some questions require getting up and moving. Find out more….