In order to clarify how we were teaching shape flow, the Columbia College Chicago LMA faculty tested our definition of shape flow by observing duets from the Martha Graham film, “The Dancer’s World.” Graham’s choreography is quite sculptural, with lots of emphasis on shape change. Consequently, the short duets were a good test case for our clarified definition of shape flow:

Shape flow is the growing and shrinking of the actual kinesphere as manifested in growing and shrinking of the body shape.… Read More

In order to resolve differences between the definitions of Lamb (growing and shrinking of the kinesphere) and Kestenberg (growing and shrinking of the body shape), we elaborated Laban’s concept of  “kinesphere.”

Laban defines the kinesphere as “the sphere around the body whose periphery can be reached by easily extended limbs without stepping away from that place which is the point of support.” This definition makes the kinesphere sound like pre-existing bubble of territory surrounding the body, with boundaries in far reach space.… Read More

Several years ago, colleagues and I found that our Laban Movement Analysis students in the Columbia College Chicago Certificate Program had developed very fuzzy notions about shape flow – an important “mode of shape change.”  As a faculty, we developed the following procedure to address this problem.

First, we reviewed the literature about shape flow. Based on the primary sources, we established a working definition for identifying shape flow. Then we tested the definition, to see if different observers could agree.… Read More

I would like to draw an analogy between the Buddha and Laban. After Buddha died, it fell to his disciples to carry on his teachings. Buddha did not record his ideas; all his teaching was oral. Moreover, he didn’t necessarily say exactly the same thing to every disciple. Consequently, many schools of Buddhism have sprung up, each claiming “authority by association.”

A similar thing occurred with Laban. As he studied movement in different contexts, he kept modifying his theoretical ideas, which he conveyed to different disciples at different times.… Read More

Around 1913, Rudolf Laban abandoned his career as a visual artist to enter the field of dance. At that time, dance was the perennial “poor relation” of the other arts, a discipline defined more by what it lacked than by what it offered.  

Traditional and genre-bound in practice, dance depended for its existence on a body to perform it and faded away the minute the performance was done. It was an ephemeral art, like music or theatre. But unlike these arts, dance was exclusively ephemeral, largely lacking in literature, history, scholarship, and theory.… Read More

The cardinal directions – up and down, right and left, forward and backward – form our most basic cognitive map of the space around the body. But according to Laban, the first fact of space-movement is “innumerable directions radiate from the center of our body and its kinesphere into infinite space.”

In other words, our cognitive map of space is highly simplified. Real movement through space is much more complex, full of deviations and deflections from the cardinal directions.

Laban engaged in a detailed yet patterned study of these innumerable lines of motion. … Read More

As various parts of the body traverse the kinesphere, the body itself changes shape.  As Laban understood, these changing bodily shapes were linked inextricably to effort, to the mental and emotional processes taking place simultaneously in the mover.

This brings us to reason Number Three for studying Choreutics:  Spatial forms are evocative.

One need only look at the work of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the greatest Baroque sculptor, to experience the expressiveness of space. I had the opportunity to see his works during a recent trip to Rome. … Read More

In addition to providing landmarks in the kinesphere, Laban designed a number of spatial sequences and patterns as technical movement exercises.

Reason Number Two for studying Choreutics:  Laban’s patterns of movement through space enhance range of motion, balance, and coordination.

Choreutic forms – “rhythmic circles and scales” – are a tonic for the body. Range of motion, balance, and coordination are fundamental indicators of physical health.  Thus these are concerns, not only for dancer and athletes, but for everybody.

Laban’s Choreutic forms are based upon his understanding of joint structure and bodily proportions. … Read More

Students of Rudolf Laban’s work seem to fall into two camps:  those who like effort and those who like space harmony (aka Choreutics).  Or perhaps more accurately, there are those who love Choreutics, and those who loathe it.

Yet there are many reasons to study Choreutics.  Reason Number 1:  Effort and space go together.

Warren Lamb puts it quite simply:  “We cannot move in making an Effort without an accompanying movement of Shaping.  These are the two components of movement…  Laban made it quite clear that this duality [effort and space] was the basis of his work.”… Read More

“Choreutics” is the term Laban invented to describe the spatial aspects of human movement. The term is a combination of two Greek words —  “chor” meaning circle and “eu” meaning “good.”  According to Laban, embodying the “good circles” that he designed  “can have a regenerating effect on our individual and social forms of life.” I’m looking for a few brave explorers to put Laban’s claims to the test.

In the forthcoming MoveScape Center seminar, “Decoding Choreutics: Part 2,” I reconstruct Choreutic forms that Laban developed in the 1920s. … Read More