Movement Study Anniversaries — Past and Present

Posted on January 4, 2018 by Carol-Lynne Moore

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

Celebrating Janus in January

Posted on January 2, 2018 by Carol-Lynne Moore

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

Bartenieff Symposium – Many Happy Connections

Posted on December 14, 2017 by Carol-Lynne Moore

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

Irmgard Bartenieff Archive – A Miracle

Posted on December 12, 2017 by Carol-Lynne Moore

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 and the Written Word

Posted on December 7, 2017 by Carol-Lynne Moore

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

Laban Prevails

Posted on November 19, 2017 by Carol-Lynne Moore

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

On Irmgard Bartenieff

Posted on November 16, 2017 by Carol-Lynne Moore

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

Constant Change…

Posted on November 14, 2017 by Carol-Lynne Moore

As Irmgard Bartenieff used to observe, “Constant change is here to stay.” This is certainly the case in Berlin, where Bartenieff grew up. When I first taught for Eurolab  — Rotterdam (1988) and Berlin (1993-1996) – the Laban Certificate Programs were modeled on the American version. And it was an irony of history that these early programs depended heavily on American faculty to teach the Europeans what the Europeans had taught the Americans! 

Two decades later, under the able direction of Antja Kennedy, the Laban programs in Germany have developed a unique format, delivered by European faculty in both German and English.… Read More

Choreutics in Berlin

Posted on November 9, 2017 by Carol-Lynne Moore

During a recent master class in Berlin, I introduced the “mixed seven-rings.” These Laban scales are analogous to the major diatonic scales in music. Participants were instructed to use the seven “signal points” of the scale as if they were musical notes and to compose a “spatial melody” in four measures. 

Students could use the signal points in any order and make them any duration. Individuals could embody the specified directions in any way they chose. Yet, interestingly, when we watched these solos, the freely constructed spatial melodies retained the fundamental qualities that Laban highlights in his unpublished writings on the mixed seven-rings.… Read More

Laban International

Posted on November 7, 2017 by Carol-Lynne Moore

I’ve just returned from teaching master classes in Berlin for Eurolab, the European Association for Laban Bartenieff Movement Studies. With advanced students from Germany, Czech Republic, Croatia, England, the U.S, and the Netherlands, it is exciting to see how Laban’s ideas are again spreading internationally. 

Before the First World War, artistic innovations and new ideas circulated freely in Europe. Two world wars and the Cold War changed all that. When I first taught for Eurolab in the early 1990s, the Berlin Wall had just come down.… Read More