As my imaginary conversation with Laban continued, the topic of the icosahedron came up.
CLM: Let’s talk more about the kinesphere.
R.Laban: Think of it as the bubble of territory surrounding your whole body – the space you can reach with your limbs without taking a step.
CLM: Does this movement space have a shape? Is it a sphere?
RL: Ideally yes. But I needed to give it a more definitive shape, with some landmarks the dancer or mover could use for orientation.… Read More
CLM: I can see that you’re sketching. Your biographers claim you gave up painting to pursue dance…
R. Laban: I gave up art as a profession, but I’ve always enjoyed drawing. So when I’m on holiday, I like to sketch, especially landscapes.
CLM: From digging in your archives, I know that you did lots of drawings related to dance and movement. These mainly figure drawings and geometrical forms. Some are quite lovely.
RL: Thank you. The drawings you are talking about weren’t meant for public display. … Read More
Guest blog by Juliet Chambers-Coe
Laban characterized the dynamic yet ephemeral world of movement as “a jungle of sudden appearances and disappearances, a glistening and colorful wonder-world which awaits exploration.”
The www.Labanarium.com is a part of this ‘jungle’ and ‘wonder-world’ of which Laban speaks. Members from across the globe meet through the network to share practice, ideas, research and inspirations from the world of movement, and it awaits your exploration!
In the spirit of movement and dance theorist Rudolf Laban, the Labanarium seeks to foster an exchange between members of the movement community and is open to the breadth and diversity of practices that explore all human movement.… Read More
Guest blog by Juliet Chambers-Coe.
In A Life for Dance, Laban recounts how he set about developing an artistic community of shared practice and ideals:
“To participate creatively in this great community idea and in the festive spirit which should be the goal and supreme aspiration of every culture…the daily building up of the communal culture which should culminate in festivities and celebrations and be intimately bound up with the development of the self…I asked all those who were sympathetic with my views to come and help realize this dreamed of way of life somewhere in the open country” (Laban, 1975).… Read More
The magical powers of movement fascinated Laban. Two anecdotes recounted in his autobiography highlight his keen interest – the first was observing a folk dance meant to make warriors immune to wounds; the second was witnessing Sufi rituals in which dancers actually stabbed themselves but the wounds closed immediately. Laban mused, “Belief in a magic that conquers nature was surely just foolishness, a childish superstition – but even so, wasn’t there something great, something immense hidden behind it?”
This reflection, or perhaps quest, is reflected in many of Laban’s theoretical writings, where he hints at the spiritual value and transcendental power of movement. … Read More
As many anthropologists have pointed out, human beings are social creatures. From infancy, and throughout life, we crave love, self-esteem and the positive recognition of others. We need to feel that we belong somewhere – in a couple, a family, a club, or an identifiable sub-culture. As Maslow notes, we “hunger for a place in a group” and will “strive with great intensity to achieve this goal.”
Surely belongingness passes into Laban’s realm of “intangible values that inspire movement.” Interestingly, Laban links effort with “the growth of man’s communal sense.” … Read More
Rudolf Laban’s father was a general in the Austro-Hungarian Army. As Laban writes in his autobiography, “My father taught me the life of a soldier, which fascinated me almost as much as did the arts.” Subsequent events show that the life of the artist won. Nevertheless, Laban drew on his military background when it came to theorizing dance and movement.
As Gwynne Dyer asserts, for almost all human history, a battle “has been an event as stylized and limited in its movement as a classical ballet, and for the same reasons: the inherent capabilities and limitations of the human body.” … Read More
The ground-breaking efficiency studies done by Rudolf Laban and F.C. Lawrence in British industry are well-known. The critical role these observations of work movement played in the development of Laban’s effort theory is far less understood. But a careful reading of Mastery of Movement, Laban’s most complete explication of effort, reveals this to be the case.
In 1947, Effort, jointly written by Laban and Lawrence, chronicled their discoveries studying work movement. Effort deals exclusively with the Action Drive – combinations of the motion factors of Weight, Time, and Space. … Read More
At the recent Bartenieff Symposium, Martha Davis lamented the loss of seminal works in nonverbal communication research. During the 1960s, there was lots of money for research. While she assisted Irmgard Bartenieff at Albert Einstein Day Hospital, other researchers such as Ray Birdwhistell, Albert Scheflen, and William Condon would drop by for informal discussions of what they were doing.Today, no one reads their work; current students are advised not to read research it wasn’t done in the last five years.
But Laban prevails.… Read More
During a recent master class in Berlin, I introduced the “mixed seven-rings.” These Laban scales are analogous to the major diatonic scales in music. Participants were instructed to use the seven “signal points” of the scale as if they were musical notes and to compose a “spatial melody” in four measures.
Students could use the signal points in any order and make them any duration. Individuals could embody the specified directions in any way they chose. Yet, interestingly, when we watched these solos, the freely constructed spatial melodies retained the fundamental qualities that Laban highlights in his unpublished writings on the mixed seven-rings.… Read More