Laban’s Choreutic forms both mirror and challenge the natural range of motion of the human body. As Laban was designing these movement sequences, he drew upon his first career as a visual artist. It’s clear from his figure drawings that he had studied anatomy. And he applied this knowledge in theorizing the shapes the moving limbs can trace in space.
As I note in The Harmonic Structure of Movement, Music, and Dance, Laban does not distort the proportion of the body itself. … Read More
Human beings have big heads, and biomechanically speaking, this is a headache. Standing up freed our arms and hands and opened new spatial horizons. But it also means we must cope with balancing our heavy heads against the constant pull of gravity.
Irmgard Bartenieff always felt that homo sapiens are still working out the possibilities of movement in three-dimensional space. Evolution has given us greater potential than we have figured out how to use. And this is where Laban’s Choreutic theories come in.… Read More
Laban did not neglect the body. He had to create body part symbols and categorize bodily actions to develop his notation system. Movement themes in Laban’s Modern Educational Dance address awareness of the body and explorations of various actions of the limbs, while over half of Mastery of Movement is devoted to enumerating bodily actions of all kinds. Laban’s focus in both these works, however, is primarily expressive.
Elaboration of the BODY category in Laban Movement Analysis is rightfully credited to Irmgard Bartenieff. … Read More
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