Denver Art Museum’s “Summer of Dance”

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My home town’s major art museum is hosting four separate exhibits on dance this summer.  Art and Dance have many close connections, so I think it’s splendid to see dance featured so prominently in a major museum setting!

My favorite exhibit is “Why We Dance: American Indian Art in Motion.”  This exhibit, assembled by in-house curators, draws upon paintings of traditional dances and displays of dance costumes, drums, and other artifacts.  It also incorporates videotaped interviews with Native American dancers who participate in the yearly powwow held at the Denver Art Museum. … Read More

Dance’s Duet with the Camera Published

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I am happy to announce the publication of Dance’s Duet with the Camera.  This collection of essays, edited by Telory D. Arendell and Ruth Barnes and published by Palgrave Macmillan, “takes on the difficult task of verbalizing how the live aspects of present, sweaty, energy-driven dancers might collaborate with the more staid, focused, and digitally manipulated forms of either 2D or 3D film.”

My own contribution to the book is a chapter on Fred Astaire.  This marvelous dancer’s best work was captured on film. … Read More

The Value of Choreutics Part 2

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In addition to developing physical skills, Choreutic practice also challenges movers intellectually.  It gives us a way to think about space.

Generally, if we think about space at all, we think of it as a void, an empty place. In other words, for us, space is an absence.  Laban, on the other hand, asserts that space is a presence, a “superabundance” of potential movements.  And he provides a geography to help us visualize the many possible pathways our movements may take.… Read More

The Value of Choreutic Practice

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“Why are we learning this?”  Anyone who has ever taught Space Harmony will have heard this question from students.  In fact, many Certified Movement Analysts have themselves struggled with this part of Laban’s work.   But the study of Choreutics is worthwhile, and in blogs across the next two months I will explain why.

To begin with, performing well-known sequences — the Axis, Girdle, and A and B Scales — helps to develop many body-level skills.  These peripheral and transverse sequences follow oblique trajectories in the space around the body.… Read More

“Advanced Space Harmony” Workshop Coming in December

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This year I set out to challenge my own understanding of Laban’s Choreutics.  I learn best when I teach others.  Thus my own Red Thread journey began in March with the Tetra seminar “Decoding Laban’s Choreutics,” a reading and correspondence course.  This close look at Part I of Laban’s mysterious masterpiece yielded new insights into the depth and scope of his theories of human movement.

In July, with the Octa workshop, “Bringing Choreutics to Life,” I took these theories forward into practice. … Read More

Navigating the World of Movement Analysis

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by Kathie Debenham

The wonderful world of Laban Movement Analysis and Bartenieff Fundamentals is  “foreign territory” to most university students who encounter it for the first time as dance majors at Utah Valley University where I have taught Introduction to Laban Studies and Bartenieff Fundamentals for 20 years. I am always on the lookout for resources that can help students enter and successfully navigate the world of movement theory and practice. My goal as a teacher is to provide the students with many opportunities to embody the concepts of Body, Effort, Shape and Space and to make meaning and discover personal application of these concepts in both their “dancing life” and the world beyond the dance studio.… Read More

The Challenge of Teaching LMA

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by Laurie Cameron

It is always a challenge to create a syllabus for Laban Movement Analysis.  At Pomona College, my goal is to cover the theoretical bases of LMA while encouraging embodiment of the material through regular practice of the Bartenieff Fundamentals and creative explorations that lead students to an understanding of the material within their own physical capabilities.  This has to happen in two one-hour and 15 minute sessions per week for 14 weeks.

Meaning in Motion has become an anchor for my course.  … Read More

LMA and the “Vaccination Theory” of Education

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In the Vaccination Theory of Education, students are led to believe that once they have “had” a subject, they are immune to it and need not take it again.

Though Postman and Weingartner proposed the vaccination theory in 1969 as a criticism of educational practices, it is hardly a dated critique.  Courses in higher education and professional training are still arranged as seemingly finite subjects.  Laban Movement Analysis is no exception.

Certainly there is more to movement analysis than can be gleaned in a one-semester course. … Read More

Meaning in Motion at Lesley University

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by Nancy Beardall

At Lesley University we use Carol-Lynne Moore’s book, Meaning in Motion: Introducing Laban Movement Analysis in both our Dance Movement Therapy masters program and the Laban/Bartenieff Certificate program housed at Lesley. Students are introduced to and read the primary source material written by Laban, Bartenieff, Dell, Lamb, North, etc., however, students appreciate the concise and clear text as presented in Meaning in Motion. Moore’s guidebook was one I was pleased to offer students as many of them are learning the material for the first time.… Read More

Inside Meaning in Motion

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“Meaning in Motion is one of the few, if not the only, contemporary texts to integrate historical, theoretical, and creative frameworks for understanding and studying Laban Movement Analysis,” writes Dr. Andrea Harris, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Dr. Harris has been using the text for several years now.  Her comment highlights key features of the book.  For example, Part 1 – History and Development of Laban Movement Analysis – discusses Laban’s career, the contributions of Irmgard Bartenieff and many others who have added to the Laban legacy.… Read More