“God Geometricizes….” Said Madame Blavatsky

Posted on March 3, 2016 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Artistic and scientific circles were not the only circles that overlapped in the fin de siècle period.  European artists of the period were also involved in various secret spiritual societies that flourished in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

 

For example, the painter Wassily Kandinsky was an ardent follower of Theosophy, one of the occult spiritual movements of the period, and one that was very attractive to artists.  As religious historian Mircea Eliade notes, avant garde European artists “utilized the occult as a powerful weapon in their rebellion against the bourgeois establishment and its ideology.”… Read More

Was Laban Seeing Double?

Posted on March 1, 2016 by Carol-Lynne Moore

More than any of his other books in English, Choreutics reveals Laban’s dual vision as a dance artist and movement scientist.  The forthcoming course, “Decoding Choreutics,” examines Laban’s double vision from more than one angle.

For example, Choreutics and the whole fabric of Laban’s space harmony theory can be seen as a design source for dance.    The various scales and “rhythmic circles” can be mined as abstract patterns for movement creation.  In this sense, Choreutics is analogous to various design sources utilized by Art Nouveau artists at the turn of the 20^th century.… Read More

On Choreography

Posted on February 18, 2016 by Carol-Lynne Moore

In the preface to Choreutics, Laban defines “choreography” as the “designing or writing of circles.”  While we use the word today to designate composing dances, Laban was obviously familiar with the origins of the term, which come from two Greek words – khoros  and graphein.

Khoros refers both to the Greek chorus and to the circular space in which they danced, while graphein obviously means to write.  Laban extends the “writing of circles” to mean notating dance and movement and uses this as a way to mention his own system of dance notation.… Read More

Chasing Laban

Posted on February 16, 2016 by Carol-Lynne Moore

In Choreutics, Laban mentions in passing a dizzying array of subjects —

Pythagoras, crystals, Lissajous curves, symmetry, semitones and overtones, lemniscates, tetrahedra,  the Golden Mean, range of motion….

Through many years of studying Laban’s published and unpublished writings and drawings, I have often found it necessary to “bone up” on various subjects that he only mentions in passing.  This is not easy, because Laban seldom specifies his sources.  Yet they must have been substantial.

Indeed Walter Sorrell notes, “I only know from hearsay that Rudolf Laban was a voracious reader whose thirst for knowledge embraced everything from religion and philosophy to literature and science.” … Read More

Decoding Laban’s Choreutics III

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Carol-Lynne Moore

One thing many readers have difficulty grappling with in Choreutics is Laban’s geometricizing of the dancer’s space.  Laban’s first career as a visual artist helps to explain this use of geometry.

Visual artists have employed geometrical schemes to capture human proportion and motion since Egyptian times.   These schemes have differed.  The Egyptians used a flat grid; Byzantine artists employed a series of concentric circles; and medieval artists superimposed ornamental shapes like triangles and stars on the human body to set contours and directions of movement, albeit in a highly stylized way.… Read More

Decoding Laban’s Choreutics II

Posted on February 9, 2016 by Carol-Lynne Moore

In the previous blog, I quoted Rudolf Laban’s characterization of choreutics as “the art, or the science” of movement study.  Our postmodern perspective draws a hard line between art and science.  But this was not the case when Laban was coming of age at the turn-of-the-century.

Munich, Laban’s first port-of-call when he began to study visual art, is a case in point.  Artists and scientists happily commingled here, and ideas drawn from science fertilized the theories and practices of artists, and vice versa.… Read More

Decoding Laban’s Choreutics I

Posted on February 4, 2016 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Choreutics is in many ways a straight-forward presentation of Laban’s movement theories.  However, more than any of Laban’s other books in English, Choreutics  is colored by Laban’s worldview.

It is recognized now that there is no such thing as pure objectivity; every theory is colored by its proposer’s experiences and beliefs.  Consequently, Laban’s worldview is not irrelevant to understanding ideas set forth in Choreutics.

In this series of blogs, I sketch aspects of Laban’s life and times and their potential influence on his theories of movement. … Read More

Capturing Movement’s Traces in Written Forms

Posted on February 2, 2016 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Around 1913, Rudolf Laban abandoned his career as a visual artist to enter the field of dance.  At the time, dance was a discipline defined more by what it lacked than by what it offered.  Laban focused his energies on altering such conditions.

He championed the cause of dance:  as a profession, as a recreative lay activity, and as a mode of education. He created a flexible dance notation system that allows works of various genre to be recorded and restaged.  … Read More

More Mysteries of Laban’s Masterpiece, Choreutics

Posted on January 21, 2016 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Laban intended for Choreutics, written in 1938-39, to be his introduction to the English reading public. With the outbreak of World War II, Laban was forced to postpone publication. After the war, however, Laban inexplicably abandoned the manuscript altogether.

Choreutics is not the only book that Laban abandoned, but it is the only manuscript that has vanished without a trace from the Rudolf Laban Archive, a vast collection of Laban’s writings and drawings from the final two decades of his career, now held by the National Resource Centre for Dance at the University of Surrey.… Read More

“Space Harmony” – A Misnomer?

Posted on January 19, 2016 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Rudolf Laban liked to coin new words to designate the movement theories he was developing. During the very fertile period of his career in Germany (1919-1929) he coined two words: “Choreutics” —dealing with the spatial forms of movement, and “Eukinetics” —dealing with qualities of kinetic energy.

Laban spent the final two decades of his career in England (1938-1958). During this period he Anglicized his movement terminology. His Eukinetic theories were presented under the term “Effort,” and Choreutics became known in Laban training programs as “Space Harmony.”… Read More