Reflections on Decoding Choreutics

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Choreutics has always been my favorite book by Rudolf Laban.  Since first reading parts of it as an undergraduate, it has inspired and mystified me by its occasional and seemingly abrupt shifts between systematic description and cosmic speculation.  Laban hints at a deeper significance in human movement, but how he gets from A to B is elusive, thought-provoking, and exciting.

My most recent re-reading was occasioned by leading a correspondence course on Choreutics, accompanied by  21 curious and acute readers.  I have not dispelled all mysteries as the result of this experience, but I have come to terms with what Laban was attempting to do. … Read More

Diagonal Corridors of Action

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For many years, I have been puzzled by Laban’s emphasis on the cubic diagonals.  He has embedded these oblique internal lines, which connect opposite corners of the cube, in his theories of both space and effort.

Spatially, diagonals represent the most mobilizing lines of motion, the slanted trajectories that lead to flying and falling. In addition, the cubic diagonals serve as axes for all the most familiar Choreutic sequences:  the Primary and A and B Scales.  The girdle, the axis scales, the polar triangles, and transverse 3-rings are all situated alongside or around these oblique lines, forming a variety of movement shapes encompassing an empty corridor of action.… Read More

Making Choreutics Personal

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Bringing choreutics to life means finding a way to make it personally meaningful.  This is the key to being able to teach this part of Laban’s work in a lively way.

The forthcoming Octa workshop aims to support personal understanding and good teaching practice.  So there will be homework assignments that ask participants to bring their own imaginative forces to bear on moving and teaching choreutic forms.

For example, consider the Primary (aka Standard) Scales.  There are four of these 12-rings. … Read More

Choreutics – The Whole Enchilada

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Like many movement analysts, I’ve always thought that choreutics was synonymous with space harmony.  But now I see that choreutics is not just about space.  For Laban, choreutics is the whole enchilada.  It is body, effort, shape, and space – movement as an integration of the physical, psychological, and spiritual.

I will be incorporating this new perspective in the forthcoming Octa workshop, Bringing Choreutics to Life.  The focus will still be on space, but with the aim of using body, effort, and shape to experience more fully the patterned trace-forms that Laban identified as a beneficial physical practice.… Read More

Bringing Choreutics to Life

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In his theoretical masterpiece Choreutics, Rudolf Laban writes that  “getting the ‘feel’ of a movement gives real understanding of it.”  Thus the upcoming Octa workshop, Bringing Choreutics to Life, is all about understanding movement by moving.

Laban’s notions of space, time, and energy are quite abstract.  The complex geometrical models he developed to represent these ideas are hard to grasp.  But Laban’s movement theories can always be linked to concrete movement.  His ideas can be embodied.

Bringing choreutic forms to life requires imagination. … Read More

Choreutics – Decoded!

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Adventurous readers on four continents have now completed my six-week correspondence course, “Decoding Rudolf Laban’s Masterpiece, Choreutics.” As Laban remarks in the final chapter, exhaustive exploration of the “immense domain of space and movement” will demand “the collaboration of generations still to come.”

I guess that means us.

For myself, the next step is demonstrating how to take Choreutic theory into practice in the forthcoming Octa workshop, Bringing Choreutics to Life.

To my fellow Choreutics decoders, I posed the following questions:

Of the many ideas presented in Choreutics, what has stimulated your imagination? … Read More

Rudolf Laban – Symmetry Freak

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Rudolf Laban was crazy about symmetry. His first career as a visual artist spanned the period from 1899 to 1919. During this period, Art Nouveau, with its focus on two-dimensional pattern, was in fashion.   Surviving works show that Laban worked in this style and was familiar with symmetry operations as a means of generating pattern.

When Laban turned his artist’s eyes to dance, he realized the power of symmetry for generating three-dimensional patterns.   Virtually all his Choreutic forms and scales are highly symmetrical.… Read More

Space Games

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I have space toys, but Laban liked to play space games. He played one game over and over and over and over again and again ….

 

His favorite game went something like this: start at one corner of a polyhedron – it can be a cube, octahedron, or icosahedron. Then trace a line touching every corner only once and return to the corner where you began.

 

Unpublished drawings in the Laban Archive in  England show that Laban played this game over and over again.… Read More

Space Toys

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Mel Brooks had Spaceballs (a Star Wars parody); I have Space Toys.

I’m not kidding. One way to bring Choreutics to life is with good geometrical models. Whenever I’m in a toy shop (or the children’s section of a museum shop), I’m always on the lookout for the newest geometrical toys.

To be honest, I’m always on the lookout. At the moment, geometrical forms are fashionable as decorative items. I just went to Hobby Lobby to buy pastel paper and walked out with a stellated icosahedron….… Read More

The Octa Is Coming

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In July, the Octa workshop, “Bringing Choreutics to Life” takes Laban’s space harmony theory into practice. This three-day workshop presents key Choreutic concepts in a way that is accessible for participants new to Laban’s ideas as well as experienced movement analysts.

Laban himself admitted that “our mental functions employ geometrical symbols to express orientation in space, but generally our feeling does not comprehend living movement within geometrical plasticity.” In other words, both understanding and embodying choreutics can be steep learning curve!… Read More