Vicarious travel is still possible and my recommendation is Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz. Part history, part travelogue, the book recounts Horwitz’s adventures following Captain James Cook’s epic voyages exploring the Pacific Ocean in the late 1700s.

Horwitz begins his own journey by working as a sailor on a replica of Cook’s ship, providing a vivid picture of the hardships encountered by the crew. Drawing on Cook’s journals, he creates a brilliant portrait of the impoverished Yorkshire farmboy who couldn’t swim, yet became the greatest navigator in British history.… Read More

During a pandemic, some find solace in comfort food.  I find solace in comfort reading.  So my first vacation reading selection is Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.

Yes, I know it’s a book for children.  But it is also a timeless tale of the pleasures of home, the lure of adventure, and the consolation of friendship in times of plenty and times of need.

There is also the beauty of Grahame’s language.  When the Mole, tired of spring cleaning, ventures out into the great world, he encounters a river for the first time – “All was a-shake and a-shiver – glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble. … Read More

Right now, real life is deadly serious.  It’s summer vacation time, but that darned virus just won’t give up!

So I’m staying home and taking a holiday – from reality.

Consequently, you won’t learn anything about Laban, Bartenieff, or Movement Pattern Analysis in the next blogs.  Instead, my suggestions for escapist reading follow.… Read More

In the shape of the circle Leonardo da Vinci perceived a correct pattern for bodily movements, for the limbs circle around their joints.  Rudolf Laban agreed, noting that most movements are curvilinear.  But he turned Leonardo’s circles into “rhythmic circles.”

Rhythmic circles are polygons – circles in which there is a spatial rhythm.  As Laban explains, “A triangle accentuates three points in the circumference of circle… a pentagon five points.  Each accent means break of the circuit line, and the emergence of a new direction.”… Read More

Thanks to the corona virus, we are all thinking a lot nowadays about the “spaces between” – social distances between ourselves and others and wistful distances between where we are and where we’d like to be.

Laban also thought a lot about the “spaces between.”

It was the spaces between “signal points” in the kinesphere that were significant for Laban. He saw these as analogous to tonal intervals in music. Just as composers use tonal relationships to write melodies and chords, Laban used spatial intervals to create harmonic movement sequences.… Read More

Now more than ever, we need room to move.  Fortunately, the kinesphere is always with us.  “Kinesphere” is the name Rudolf Laban coined for the spherical bubble of empty space surrounding the body.  The “kinesphere” is defined it as the space that can be reached without taking a step.  You don’t have to go anywhere to enjoy it, for as Laban noted, “We never leave our movement sphere but carry it always with us, like an aura.”

To help the mover explore his or her kinesphere, Laban created imaginary landmarks in this empty bubble of space. … Read More

Several years ago I drew on several space harmony sequences to facilitate my recovery from back surgery.

Naturally, prior to and following the surgery, I was in physical therapy, where most of the prescribed exercises were repetitive, two-dimensional actions.  Finally it occurred to me that I could repeat these exercises forever without being rehabilitated for movement in three-dimensions.  That is when I began to use Choreutics for movement invention.

For example, I was prescribed a series of “nerve flossing” exercises for the legs done lying supine. … Read More

In his first career as a visual artist, Rudolf Laban came of age during the height of the Art Nouveau movement.  This “new art” movement turned flora and fauna into stylized patterns.  Artists drew upon botanical photos and zoological illustrations as inspirational sources for their own designs.

Laban was undoubtedly familiar with these design sources and the pattern making procedures employed by Art Nouveau artists.  When he decided to become a dancer, he must have recognized that dance is also an art based on pattern. … Read More

Because Rudolf Laban had studied visual art in Paris at one of the great European art academies, he knew the body, not only as a dancer, but also as a painter who understood anatomy.

Although Laban gave up art when he became a dancer, he never gave up drawing.  Instead, he used his knowledge of the human figure to paint movement on the canvas of space.

Many of Laban’s surviving figure drawings are “gesture drawings” – rough sketches done rapidly that depict the main lines of a pose without details. … Read More

The dancer brings life to empty space, filling it with rhythmic forms traced by the dancer’s moving limbs.  Thus “spatial harmony,” according to Rudolf Laban, “is our basic experience in dance.”

The human body is solid and full; the surrounding space is insubstantial and empty.  Yet a harmonic relationship exists between the two.

Laban understood that the spatial trace-forms the dancer creates are dependent on bodily proportion, joint structure, and range of motion.  Body and space are different, yet harmonically interrelated.… Read More