I began my blogs this year by looking back. Now I want to look forward – to how the past accomplishments of pioneers of movement study can enrich present and future generations.
Rudolf Laban’s assertion that human movement has a harmonic structure analogous to musical harmony is one idea I would like to see taken seriously enough to be tested. While I have presented Laban’s notions in detail in The Harmonic Structure of Movement, Music, and Dance, this is not enough.… Read More
For most dance and movement people, glistening with sweat and reveling in the joys of embodiment, research in a dusty archive must sound like one of the dullest pastimes ever. Few things are as exhilarating as dancing, but discovering things in an archive can also be exciting. I ought to know.
I spent seven years (with time out for good behavior!) doing research in the Rudolf Laban Archive at the National Resource Centre for Dance in England. I was perusing Laban’s unpublished writings and drawings.… Read More
Prior to the Bartenieff Symposium last year, I arranged to peek at a few files in the newly accessible Bartenieff Archive at the University of Maryland. My aim was to look at correspondence between Warren Lamb, Judith Kestenberg, and Irmgard. I think of these three leading figures in the field of movement study as a triumvirate of minds. While they each did their own thing, they also studied and worked closely with one another. There must have been a fascinating cross-fertilization of ideas….… Read More
Continuing the January theme of looking back and forward, 2017 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Language of Dance Center UK and the twentieth anniversary of the Language of Dance US. The LOD centers are dedicated to the promotion of movement literacy by linking dance notation with creative dance exploration and education.
To commemorate these milestones, a celebration was held on October 28, 2017, at the Royal Academy of Dance in London.This event included a free workshop followed by a panel discussion on applications of the Language of Dance in the UK, US, Mexico, and Japan.… Read More
January is named after the Roman god Janus. As the god of beginnings, transitions, and endings, Janus is usually depicted with two faces, one looking to the future and one to the past. To celebrate the god of this month, I will begin a new year of blogging with some reflections on the previous year.
2017 was marked by progress in preserving the history of movement analysis. Materials contributed to the National Resource Centre for Dance at the University of Surrey by Rudolf Laban’s gifted protégé, Warren Lamb, have now been preserved and catalogued.… Read More
On November 10th close to 65 Labanites gathered at the Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, to celebrate the opening of the Irmgard Bartenieff Archive.
Susan Wiesner, a digital humanist, had organized the event. Here is birds’ eye view of the happy gathering.
– Forrestine Paulay and Martha Davis in conversation about their respective studies and research with Irmgard
– Carol-Lynne Moore – Bartenieff: Icon of Possibilities
– Ann Hutchinson Guest and others – sharing memories of Irmgard
– Movement sessions led by Peggy Hackney, Tara Francia Stepenberg, and Karen Studd
-Robin Neveu Brown (and husband) – comedic performance piece on giving birth through Laban lenses
-Catherine Eliot – Bartenieff’s Legacy and Occupational Therapy
-Rachell Palnick Tsachor – Movement and Trauma
-Susan Wiesner – film showing of “Schrifftanz Zwei” – a reimagining of Bartenieff’s “Chinese Ballad” choreography, based on archival notes and floor plans
The event closed with a movement choir led by Catherine McCoubrey
This was one of the most satisfying events I’ve been to – a wonderful reconnecting with old friends and new.… Read More
For years after Bartenieff’s death in 1981, the Laban Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies carefully stored her papers but lacked the funds for full preservation and cataloging. The papers remained, untouched and unseen, in a warehouse in Brooklyn. And then there was a fire in the warehouse.
A cry for help went out to the Laban community, and through crowdfunding, enough money was raised to allow Vincent Novarra, Curator of Special Collections from the University of Maryland Performing Arts Library, to rent a truck, drive to Brooklyn, and see if Bartenieff’s papers had survived.… Read More
Dance is a nonverbal art. Yet, as practitioners of an evanescent art, writing is often quite important to dancers. Nijinsky kept a diary. Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, Agnes DeMille, and Paul Taylor produced autobiographies. Isadora Duncan wrote essays on the dance, as did Merce Cunningham and Murray Louis. Doris Humphrey and Twyla Tharp have addressed creative issues in dance. Katherine Dunham, whose career spans anthropology and performance, has written profusely.
The list goes on and on. Dance may be a nonverbal art, but dancers are hardly silent on this subject.… Read More
At the recent Bartenieff Symposium, Martha Davis lamented the loss of seminal works in nonverbal communication research. During the 1960s, there was lots of money for research. While she assisted Irmgard Bartenieff at Albert Einstein Day Hospital, other researchers such as Ray Birdwhistell, Albert Scheflen, and William Condon would drop by for informal discussions of what they were doing.Today, no one reads their work; current students are advised not to read research it wasn’t done in the last five years.
But Laban prevails.… Read More
In the summer of 1975, I left the Nikolai-Louis Studio, walked across Union Square to the Dance Notation Bureau, and declared I was interested in the Effort/Shape Program.
I was ushered in to see Irmgard Bartenieff, a delicate elderly German lady who had worked directly with Rudolf Laban. She was guiding spirit of the Effort/Shape program. I don’t remember exactly what we talked about, but Irmgard was open and encouraging. I became her student, then her assistant, and eventually a fellow faculty member.… Read More