Dog Days of Summer

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Those lazy, hazy days of August have arrived! I bet you’re ready to head for the
mountains, hit the beach, or just relax under a shady tree. Want to throw a book or
two in that suitcase? Here are some suggestions.


For a great review of LMA, there’s always Meaning in Motion. Otherwise, my
vacation reading list for Laban Movement Analysts includes history that reads like
fiction, titles to stimulate the mind and imagination, and even a crazy travelogue for
those who prefer for their thrills to be vicarious.… Read More

On Laban’s Choreutics and Chirality

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In the current Movement Harmony Project my correspondents and I are investigating  handedness – or which arm should lead when embodying different Choreutic scales.  As it turns out, handedness, or chirality, is of interest to scientists as well as dancers.

Chirality is a kind of chemical handedness first discovered by Louis Pasteur.  He was puzzled by the fact that crystals derived from the dregs of wine twisted light in a specific direction, but the same crystal synthesized in the lab did not.… Read More

Human Hands, Handedness, and Chirality

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Handedness, or a preference for using either the right or left hand, occurs in nearly 96% of the population, according to scientific studies.  Moreover, the phenomenon extends beyond hand movements to a preference for using one side of the body over the other.  Dancers have to contend with this bias, which is why turns, jumps, gestures, and locomotion sequences are practiced leading with both the right and left.

Dance practice can ameliorate but not eliminate handedness.  This is because all organic nature seems to share a bias towards handedness.  … Read More

Laban: Artist and Scientist

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The division between science and art was much less marked in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and this made it possible for a polymath like Laban to know something about what was going on in each of these two intellectual cultures.

Here are a few examples.  In his first career as a visual artist, Laban studied with Hermann Obrist in Munich.  Before turning to art, Obrist had been a botanist.  He drew on his scientific knowledge to generate stylized Art Nouveau designs of flora and fauna that moved increasingly towards abstraction, serving not only as a mentor to Laban but also to Vassily Kandinsky.… Read More

Science and Art: The “Two Cultures”

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In a famous lecture delivered 60 years ago, the English scientist and writer C.P. Snow claimed that intellectual specialization has created “two cultures” – the scientific and the artistic.  Snow found that scientists and artists could no longer communicate with one another because those in one discipline lacked the knowledge possessed by those in the other.  He worried that this mutual incomprehension prevented solutions to social problems.

His observations continue to stimulate heated debate, perhaps for a good reason.

According to John O.… Read More

From Time and Motion Study to Dancing with Robots

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In the first three Industrial Revolutions new sources of power and mechanical inventions necessitated careful study and training of human workers so that labor was safe, effective, and productive.  For example, the dancer and choreographer Rudolf Laban drew on his movement knowledge to address problems arising from the repetitive assembly line labor that characterized the second Industrial Revolution.

New concerns are voiced about upcoming technological changes.  Klaus Schwab, Chairman of the World Economic Forum, worries that the “Fourth Industrial Revolution may indeed have the potential to “robotize humanity.”… Read More

Dance Improvisation and Life Skills

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Social dance classes have become exponentially popular since I was at Stanford, with classes filling through online registration in less than a minute.  Lecturer Richard Powers, who launched the program in 1992, estimates that 15,000 Stanford students have taken his classes over the last 27 years.

Students interviewed for the May article in the Stanford Alumni magazine cite many “take aways” from learning ballroom dance that translate to other areas of life.  For example, one mechanical engineering student found that dancing was a way to empty his mind and be with his partner, equating the experience to meditation – only better!… Read More

Stanford University Catches Up

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When I was a student at Stanford in the early 1970s, you could take some dance classes, but these were purely recreational and non-academic.  There was a wonderful modern dance teacher – Inge Weiss, a former Wigman dancer. There was no dance major, however. When I got serious about studying dance, I took a leave of absence, earning degrees through my PhD elsewhere.

Fast forward to 2005, when Stanford alumni who had published were invited to display their books during reunion activities.  … Read More

Reversing Laban’s Career Path

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For the first two decades of his adult life, Rudolf Laban trained and worked as a visual artist.  He did not begin his emergence as a major mover and shaker in the European dance world until he was 40 years old.  Nevertheless, his knowledge and skills in visual art served him well in his new career.

For the past few years, I have been studying visual art.  My aim is to reverse Laban’s career, switching from dance to art as I become superannuated. … Read More

Grappling with a Girdle

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Lately I have been grappling with a girdle – not the underwear kind, the Choreutic kind.  I’ve been trying to create suggestions for how to embody each of the four Girdles that Laban identified.

These spatial sequences are peripheral six-rings that surround a diagonally tilted axis.  The Girdles themselves are tilted circles, part of which lies in front of the mover, and part of which lies behind the mover.

I’m quite fond of two of the Girdles that fall in front of the body and rise behind it. … Read More