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

The Tetra Takes Off

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Twenty-one brave readers on four continents began the Tetra seminar, Decoding Laban’s Choreutics on March 26th. This “great books” correspondence course is focused on Laban’s posthumously published masterpiece, also known as The Language of Movement.

Over a six-week period, we are exploring the book two chapters at a time. I use the word “exploring” purposefully, for I see this course as a journey of discovery for all twenty-two of us.

It is certainly proving to be a journey of discovery for me.… Read More

Laban’s Idealized Kinesphere

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The sphere is Laban’s model for the space adjacent to the mover’s body.  The center of gravity of the body is also the center of the kinesphere, which extends equally in all directions, establishing a boundary based on the areas of space that can be reached without taking a step.

According to Laban, “all points of the kinesphere can be reached by simple movements, such as bending, stretching, and twisting, or by a combination of these.”

Laban’s choreutic prototypes exploit this spherical movement space using symmetrical trace-forms that oscillate up and down, from side to side, and in front and behind the body.… Read More

Rehearsing Laban’s Prototypes

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Polar triangles, axis and girdle scales, primary scales, and the A and B scales – these were the Laban prototypes we wanted to study.  Thus the research project began with a crash course in space harmony for three Ohio University dance faculty (Travis Gatling, Tresa Randall, and Marina Walchi).

We only had three days to prepare our performers (all relative newcomers to Laban theory) for the motion capture/videotaping session.   We wanted the dancers not only to remember the prototypic sequences but also to perform them well. … Read More

Decoding Choreutics – Key #2

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As an artist-scientist, Laban is concerned not only with the geometry of movement, but also with its expressive meaning.  This dual vision gives rise to his theory of natural affinities between lines of motion and effort qualities.

Laban’s working out of these correlations, introduced in Choreutics in Chapter 3, is intriguing but not entirely original.  The expressive value of line and form has its roots in theory of empathy propounded by late 19th and early 20th century  psychologists and art theorists.… Read More

“God Geometricizes….” Said Madame Blavatsky

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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 19th and early 20th 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

On Choreography

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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

Dancing through Time

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Dance is often viewed as a form of self-expression.  But everyone expresses themselves through their bodily movements.  These quotidian expressions differ from dance in an important way however, for everyday expressive actions are spontaneous, un-rehearsed, un-premediated and largely unguarded.

Dance movements, on the other hand, are carefully chosen, rehearsed, and controlled.  One of the attractions of dance training is not only enhanced freedom of bodily expression, but also increased control.  Yes, dancers are control freaks.  But they are also optimists.  Dance offers the possibility to construct a new self – one that is leaner, stronger, more capable, more sexy — in short, more of whatever attribute a particular style of dance may emphasize.… Read More

On Space and Time

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Dance is an art that exists in both space and time.  In 2016, MoveScape Center will be offering a series of workshops about space, focusing on Rudolf Laban’s Choreutic theories.  As 2015 draws to an end, however, I want to focus on time.

Space is multi-dimensional. Time, on the other hand, is uni-directional.  It flows in one irreversible direction — from past to present to future.

In reality, we exist only in the present moment.  The past is gone; the future may never come. … Read More

Exertion and Recuperation

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When the dancer Rudolf Laban began to study work movement in British factories, two concerns predominated.  The first was efficiency; the second was fatigue.  By the 1940s, of course, there were laws governing the length of the workday and providing additional protection for the health and safety of workers.  Nevertheless, repetitive activity of any sort is tiring.  Human beings are not machines.  We cannot repeat any motion endlessly without the need for variation.

In turning his dancer’s eyes to repetitive labor, Laban identified a basic rhythm. … Read More