Movement Harmony – A Very Useful Metaphor

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According to Rudolf Laban, “Between the harmonic life of music and that of dance, there is not only a superficial resemblance but a structural congruity.” Laban’s insistence that movement has a harmonic structure is usually interpreted as a wishful by-product of his mystical worldview. But this is a misinterpretation.

Instead, Laban is employing harmony as an analogic metaphor. An analogic metaphor is a controlled comparison in which the analog model (in this case, dance and movement) shares with the original (in this case, musical harmony) the same structure and pattern of relationships.… Read More

Testing Shape Flow…and Why This Matters

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In order to clarify how we were teaching shape flow, the Columbia College Chicago LMA faculty tested our definition of shape flow by observing duets from the Martha Graham film, “The Dancer’s World.” Graham’s choreography is quite sculptural, with lots of emphasis on shape change. Consequently, the short duets were a good test case for our clarified definition of shape flow:

Shape flow is the growing and shrinking of the actual kinesphere as manifested in growing and shrinking of the body shape.… Read More

Potential and Actual Kinespheres

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In order to resolve differences between the definitions of Lamb (growing and shrinking of the kinesphere) and Kestenberg (growing and shrinking of the body shape), we elaborated Laban’s concept of  “kinesphere.”

Laban defines the kinesphere as “the sphere around the body whose periphery can be reached by easily extended limbs without stepping away from that place which is the point of support.” This definition makes the kinesphere sound like pre-existing bubble of territory surrounding the body, with boundaries in far reach space.… Read More

Respecting the Laban Legacy: A Case Study

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Several years ago, colleagues and I found that our Laban Movement Analysis students in the Columbia College Chicago Certificate Program had developed very fuzzy notions about shape flow – an important “mode of shape change.”  As a faculty, we developed the following procedure to address this problem.

First, we reviewed the literature about shape flow. Based on the primary sources, we established a working definition for identifying shape flow. Then we tested the definition, to see if different observers could agree.… Read More

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

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I would like to draw an analogy between the Buddha and Laban. After Buddha died, it fell to his disciples to carry on his teachings. Buddha did not record his ideas; all his teaching was oral. Moreover, he didn’t necessarily say exactly the same thing to every disciple. Consequently, many schools of Buddhism have sprung up, each claiming “authority by association.”

A similar thing occurred with Laban. As he studied movement in different contexts, he kept modifying his theoretical ideas, which he conveyed to different disciples at different times.… Read More

The Laban Legacy

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Around 1913, Rudolf Laban abandoned his career as a visual artist to enter the field of dance. At that time, dance was the perennial “poor relation” of the other arts, a discipline defined more by what it lacked than by what it offered.  

Traditional and genre-bound in practice, dance depended for its existence on a body to perform it and faded away the minute the performance was done. It was an ephemeral art, like music or theatre. But unlike these arts, dance was exclusively ephemeral, largely lacking in literature, history, scholarship, and theory.… Read More

Choreutics Decoded — More Mixology!

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We also explored mixed 4-rings.  These are rectangular forms comingling transversals from two different A and B scales with peripheral edges to connect them.  The resulting form is a twisted plane that lies in only one half of the kinesphere.

Mixed 4-rings with steep transversals are confined either to the mover’s right or left. Those with flat transversals lie in front or behind.  And those with flat transversals are situated above or below waist level.

Moreover, the mixed 4-rings are not two-dimensional flat planar forms, like the mixed 2-rings.… Read More

Choreutics Decoded — Mix It Up!

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All the familiar space harmony forms are consistently made up of either central, transverse, or peripheral trajectories. In Part 2, however, Laban starts to mix tranverse and peripheral lines of motion to create some really interesting rings.

We explored, for example, mixed 2-rings. This designation is a misnomer, for mixed 2-rings are rectangles (aka 4-rings) arrayed in an interesting way in the kinesphere.

I refer to mixed 2-rings as “tilted planes.” There are 12 of these, each forming 4 sets of interlocking flat, steep, and flowing planes. … Read More

Choreutics Decoded – New Fun Forms

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Some forms in Part 2 of Choreutics are a real departure from space harmony “business as usual.” For example, in all well-known Choreutic forms, Laban avoids using the short and long edges of the cardinal planes. These peripheral and transverse lines are either plumb with the line of gravity or perpendicular to it. Thus they are stable — and to be avoided!

Also, all the well-known Choreutic forms use the cubic diagonals as their axes.

However, in Part 2, Laban begins to employ planar edges in the trace-forms and planar diameters as axes.… Read More

Choreutics Decoded – Beyond “Rhythmic Circles”

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The spatial sequences that Laban presents in Part 1 of Choreutics  are “rhythmic circles” – closed polygonal trace-forms that begin and end in the same spatial location. But in Part 2, Laban created open sequences that begin and end in different parts of the kinesphere.

We explored several of these open forms, notably “snakes” and “shears.”

Snakes are taken from the volutes of the A and B Scales – essentially a volute linked to the next point in the scale. They lead on in space and lend themselves to free improvisation in terms of finding a way to complete the sequence.… Read More