I have long been fascinated with the ritual of bowing in Japan. Clerks in a hotel bow when you enter the lobby. They bow when you finish checking in. Conductors bow when entering a train car. They bow again when exiting. Groups of friends, particularly if they are older, with bow deeply when parting.
I can’t pretend to grasp the ins and outs of the etiquette of bowing. But bowing seems to serve as a boundary marker, delineating the beginning and ending of many social interactions. … Read More
It is helpful to have a malleable kinesphere in Japan, because one often finds oneself in a crowd. For example, I have made a close and practical study of how to weave through a crowd while dragging a suitcase. Shape flow growing and shrinking is of little use (the suitcase, after all, has a fixed shape). Instead, one needs to watch for openings and slip through in a timely manner, or detect a stream flowing in your direction and go with the flow.… Read More
General space is a commodity not to be wasted in Japan. Heavily forested mountains cover most of the archipelago of islands. Flatland suitable for habitation and cultivation is precious. Wherever we have traveled in Japan, small rice fields, gardens, and orchards are sandwiched between a jumble of residential, commercial, and industrial buildings.
Personal space must also be used economically. Each time my husband and I checked into a new hotel, we had a moment of consternation – the room was so small! … Read More
The Japanese also play hard, and some of the biggest, most labor-intensive parties take place in the street during traditional festivals. The fall festival in the city of Takayama, where our daughter teaches English, is one of the most spectacular.
Takayama’s festival is famous for its yatai, some of which are 300 years old. Yatai are elaborately carved and richly decorated three story wooden wagons. People ride in the wagons, and many have small groups of children on board, playing traditional Japanese flutes and drums.… Read More
Working hard is a tradition in Japan. Nowhere is this clearer than in Shirakawa-go, a remote farming village located in the mountainous region of Honshu between Takayama and Kanazawa. Shirakawa-go, now a UNESCO World Heritage site, is an outstanding example of a traditional way of life perfectly adapted to the environment and the resident’s social and economic circumstances.
The village was founded in the late 12th century by survivors of the Heike clan. Virtually wiped out by the Genji clan in a brutal battle in 1185, the Heike followed the Sho River deep into the densely forested Japan Alps until they found an isolated valley in which to settle. … Read More
I just spent three weeks traveling around Japan by train with my husband and daughter. Both of them can speak and read Japanese. I cannot. Consequently, I am useless when it comes to most verbal transactions.
While deaf and dumb, I still can see. To avoid total confusion, I spend a lot of time observing behavior, the social context, and the environment. In the following blogs, I share some of these observations through the lens of Laban Movement Analysis. I will focus on effort, general and personal space, and the use of the body.… Read More
Since the discovery of neuroplasticity (the lifelong capacity of the human nervous system to regenerate and form new neural pathways), we aging Baby Boomers have been admonished to reinvent ourselves and learn new things, presumably so we will stay young forever.
This is, of course, hard advice to follow. Not everyone wants to take up scuba diving or have a second career. Moreover, we are creatures of habit. And one hallmark of skilled movement is that it has become, at least in part, automatic.… Read More
As Fred Astaire crooned to Ginger Rogers — “The way you wear your hat, the way you sip your tea, the memory of all that, no, no they can’t take that away from me. “ Simple actions are memorable. According to Mabel Ellsworth Todd, “It is not our parents’ faces that come back to us, but their bodies, in the accustomed chairs, eating, sewing, smoking, doing all the familiar things. We remember each as a body in action.”
We all have a preferred way of being in the world, and we embody this. … Read More
Effort is not only about doing; it is also about being, or what Rudolf Laban calls movement thinking. “Movement thinking could be considered as a gathering of impressions of happenings in one’s own mind, for which nomenclature is lacking. This thinking does not serve orientation in the external world but rather it perfects man’s orientation in his inner world.”
Laban relates movement thinking to effort in the following way: “Man’s desire to orientate himself in the maze of his drives results in definite effort rhythms.” … Read More
Every voluntary human movement involves applying energy to change the position of the body. Energy can be applied in many different ways. Rudolf Laban referred to these various qualities of kinetic energy as effort. Similarly, the moving body can trace many different shapes as it traverses space. Consequently, the human beings possess a richer range of motion than most other species. As Laban observes, “When jumping the cat will be relaxed and flexible. A horse or a deer will bound wonderfully in the air, but its body will be tense and concentrated during the jump.” … Read More