When I met Irmgard Bartenieff, she was in her 70s.  Although obviously elderly, her hands were remarkably strong.  They appeared large, almost out-of-proportion with her slender figure.  Since she had been a masseuse and physical therapist, it is perhaps natural that Irmgard had strong hands.  Yet it is their expressivity that I also remember keenly.

Irmgard did not dwell in the past, and her younger American students never asked much about what her life had been like in Germany. Yet Irmgard was a young adult when the Weimar Republic was created. … Read More

Early in my LMA Certification Program, I was stretching before class when Irmgard Bartenieff approached me.  “You must understand,” she said rather fiercely, “that the greatest muscular tension does not equal the greatest movement!”

The crystal-clear logic of the statement forever altered the way I view exercise.  As a young dancer, I somehow came to believe that pain was part of good practice.  Slowly, under Bartenieff’s tutelage, I began to understand that good practice does not necessitate tense gripping and sore muscles.… Read More

During the period when the Effort/Shape Certification Program was based at the Dance Notation Bureau in New York City, Irmgard Bartenieff characterized the program’s foci as “seeing, doing, and writing movement.”  This trifecta offers three avenues for understanding movement – objective, third person analysis; subjective, first person experience; and symbolic representation using Kinetography/Labanotation.

July 2025 offers a chance to revisit these three different avenues of understanding during the joint conferences of the International Council of Kinetography Laban and the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies at the Ohio State University.… Read More

Much of Irmgard Bartenieff’s reputation rests on “Bartenieff Fundamentals” – the somatic practice she evolved during her rehabilitation work with polio patients.  In my 20s, Bartenieff Fundamentals altered how I approached dance technique.  Now, as I experience conventional physical therapy in my 70s, I start to see how radical Bartenieff’s practices were, and are.

Irmgard received conventional training in physical therapy, graduating from New York University.  But early in her work with patients recovering from paralysis, she started to see limitations to existing practices.… Read More

When I began to study with Irmgard Bartenieff in 1975, she was 75 years old.  Her age was just a number – what mattered was the depth and breadth of her many experiences.  She was an icon of possibility for her younger students, a living example of the many ways Laban-based movement analysis could be used in artistic creation, therapeutic intervention, and behavioral research.

By 1975, the Effort/Shape program at the Dance Notation Bureau had an established curriculum: theory (effort/space/shape); observation; Bartenieff Fundamentals; and seminar (a weekly reading and discussion class). … Read More

Named for the two-faced Roman god Janus, the wintery month of January invites both reflection and anticipation.  In a spirit of reflection, I find myself thinking about “Afterward,” a ghost story by Edith Wharton.

In this tale, a wealthy American couple purchase an old home in the English countryside, hoping it is haunted.  They are assured the house comes with a ghost – although they will only know this “long, long afterward.”

As months pass, they forget about the ghost.  Then, while the wife is working in the garden, a stranger appears, asking to see her husband. … Read More

Bartenieff has written that movement dynamics are a critical component in understanding movement behavior.  As she notes, “We see not only the design of movement (its direction and timing) but by its specific dynamics we catch its meaning, its impact and expressiveness.”

Notation captures which part of the body moves, where it goes, and how long the action takes.  Space Harmony/Choreutics approaches bodily movement in space from a more theoretical position by prescribing spatial paths and sequences of whole body action.  … Read More

Irmgard Bartenieff notes that there are three crystallizations of Laban’s ways of looking at, describing, and notating movement: “(1) space harmony (choreutics), (2) Labanotation/Kinetography, and (3) Effort/Effort notation.”

In addition, Bartenieff explains that the existence of these three systems enables Laban’s “colleagues and students to study and work with some extremely elusive phenomena in tangible ways.”

The “elusive phenomena” to which Bartenieff refers are human movements.  In everyday life, the actions of our bodies disappear even as they are occurring.  That is, movement exists at a perpetual vanishing point. … Read More

I have always found Rudolf Laban’s book, Choreutics, to be inspiring.

Here are a few of my favorite quotations:

• “Movement is the life of space.”
• “Stability and mobility endlessly alternate.”
• “Although in analysis we look at movement from the standpoint of an outside observer, we should try to feel it sympathetically from within.”

Find your own inspiration in the upcoming hybrid workshop, “Decoding Laban’s Choreutics,” offered in conjunction with the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies.

 … Read More