MoveScape Center (MSC): Delivering all those gifts in one night is an arduous task. What is one of your biggest physical challenges?
Santa (S): Level change. I’m hopping out of the sleigh, zipping down the chimney, kneeling to place the gifts around the tree, then popping back up the chimney over and over again.
MSC: What’s your secret?
MSC: Tell me more.
S: Of all the somatic practices, this is the one that really supports the ability to change levels. … Read More
Despite his venerable age, Santa Claus remains as “lively and quick” as ever. His labors delivering gifts on Christmas Eve put even Amazon Prime to shame. How does Santa stay fit? Inquiring readers want to know!
Once again MoveScape Center has secured an exclusive interview with this jolly old elf. We have asked him how he maintains his youthful vitality – and received some surprising answers.
Find out more in the next blogs.… Read More
In the beginning of her 1962 lecture, Irmgard Bartenieff explains: “My work in rehabilitation has been almost from the start research into the nature of physical disability (distorted functional movement) and of mental illness (disturbed emotional or expressive movement).”
She goes on to note that “thinking in terms of EFFORT eliminates the arbitrary separation of the physical and the psychological.”
She closes by recommending that the Dance Notation Bureau promote effort notation and observation in addition to Labanotation. “The existence of both systems, supplementary to each other, opens up new possibilities for research in all areas of human movement, whether it be dance, science or industry.”… Read More
After explaining that effort notation captures the essence of movement – its quality and dynamics, Bartenieff describes how effort assessment can be of value to the physical therapist. She notes that many patients have vague complaints that cannot be tracked down to any organic source but do relate to an imbalance of dynamic energy (Effort) and how that energy is formed (Shape).
Bartenieff affirms that “Movement expression alwas comprises functional and emotional components which may weaken or reinforce one another; in looking at a physically distorted movement, one is often viewing emotional expression.”… Read More
Bartenieff begins by explaining that Labanotation can capture in every detail “the path and design of a faulty movement,” providing the physical therapist with precise information about what needs to be corrected.
However, as physical therapists are becoming more concerned the emotional elements that characterize biological movement, Labanotation is found wanting.
“No longer can the therapist depend upon a system of notation which deals with quantity, with architectural structure and design,” Bartenieff asserts. Instead the therapist “must turn to a system which tells how movement takes place.”… Read More
In 1962, Irmgard Bartenieff was expected to lecture on “Notation in Physical Therapy” for a national conference hosted by the Dance Notation Bureau in New York City. Instead, she lectured on “Effort Observation and Assessment in Rehabilitation.”
In this historic lecture, Bartenieff clearly differentiates how the structural notation, developed by Rudolf Laban, and the effort/shape notation, developed by Warren Lamb, provide complementary information for those involved in physical and psychological therapies.
Her paper provides much food for thought. Since November is the month of the Thanksgiving feast, Bartenieff’s observations are the subject for my November blogs.… Read More
Just as there are pleasant dreams and nightmares, so too the Spell Drive encompasses a range of moods, depending on the mixture of fighting and indulging effort qualities. If this transformation drive conjures vampires and evil necromancers, it also evokes fairy godmothers and benevolent elementals.
Here are some pleasant associations: surrendering to a pleasurable daydream, gently concentrating one’s attention, weaving a net of enchantment, hanging fascinated on someone’s every word, pointing a magic wand with fine touch, wandering in a magical forest.… Read More
Spell Drive draws its motivation from the desire to exercise power over something or someone. Alternatively, it can also arise through a desire to surrender one’s will or to give in to something so fascinating (or terrifying) that time seems to stand still.
A good example of Spell Drive can be found in the classic film Dracula starring Bela Lugosi. In one scene Dracula is confronted by vampire slayer Professor Van Helsing, and they engage in a battle of wills. Lugosi seeks to overpower his foe by a concentrated gaze and gesture of Directing, Increasing Pressure, and Binding. … Read More
Obviously Spell Drive has something to do with casting a spell, or being mesmerized. On my effort hunt for examples of Spell Drive, the film The Illusionist has some wonderful scenes with clear instances of Spell Drive.
Set in Vienna in 1889, the film draws on the public interests in magic, hypnotism, and other occult practices that were rampant at the time. The plot chronicles a love story between an aristocratic girl and her humble lover, who becomes a stage magician in order to rescue his love from her unhappy marriage to a brutal prince.… Read More
October is the month of Halloween, and so it seems appropriate that my blogs this month focus on the transformation drive Laban named the “Spell Drive.”
In these effort combinations, Flow replaces Time, melding with the stabilizing qualities of Weight and Space. Spell is the timeless drive that conjures up an inescapable intensity of concentration or fascination. As Bartenieff describes, “It is comparable to ‘a witch’s spell,’ or the power of an irresistible seduction.”
Spell always seems to me to be the effort drive least suited to contemporary life, in which time is always foreground because everything happens so quickly, or not quickly enough. … Read More