The Value of Choreutic Practice

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“Why are we learning this?”  Anyone who has ever taught Space Harmony will have heard this question from students.  In fact, many Certified Movement Analysts have themselves struggled with this part of Laban’s work.   But the study of Choreutics is worthwhile, and in blogs across the next two months I will explain why.

To begin with, performing well-known sequences — the Axis, Girdle, and A and B Scales — helps to develop many body-level skills.  These peripheral and transverse sequences follow oblique trajectories in the space around the body.… Read More

“Advanced Space Harmony” Workshop Coming in December

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This year I set out to challenge my own understanding of Laban’s Choreutics.  I learn best when I teach others.  Thus my own Red Thread journey began in March with the Tetra seminar “Decoding Laban’s Choreutics,” a reading and correspondence course.  This close look at Part I of Laban’s mysterious masterpiece yielded new insights into the depth and scope of his theories of human movement.

In July, with the Octa workshop, “Bringing Choreutics to Life,” I took these theories forward into practice. … Read More

Navigating the World of Movement Analysis

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by Kathie Debenham

The wonderful world of Laban Movement Analysis and Bartenieff Fundamentals is  “foreign territory” to most university students who encounter it for the first time as dance majors at Utah Valley University where I have taught Introduction to Laban Studies and Bartenieff Fundamentals for 20 years. I am always on the lookout for resources that can help students enter and successfully navigate the world of movement theory and practice. My goal as a teacher is to provide the students with many opportunities to embody the concepts of Body, Effort, Shape and Space and to make meaning and discover personal application of these concepts in both their “dancing life” and the world beyond the dance studio.… Read More

The Challenge of Teaching LMA

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by Laurie Cameron

It is always a challenge to create a syllabus for Laban Movement Analysis.  At Pomona College, my goal is to cover the theoretical bases of LMA while encouraging embodiment of the material through regular practice of the Bartenieff Fundamentals and creative explorations that lead students to an understanding of the material within their own physical capabilities.  This has to happen in two one-hour and 15 minute sessions per week for 14 weeks.

Meaning in Motion has become an anchor for my course.  … Read More

LMA and the “Vaccination Theory” of Education

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In the Vaccination Theory of Education, students are led to believe that once they have “had” a subject, they are immune to it and need not take it again.

Though Postman and Weingartner proposed the vaccination theory in 1969 as a criticism of educational practices, it is hardly a dated critique.  Courses in higher education and professional training are still arranged as seemingly finite subjects.  Laban Movement Analysis is no exception.

Certainly there is more to movement analysis than can be gleaned in a one-semester course. … Read More

Writing Meaning in Motion

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I didn’t start out to write an introductory Laban Movement Analysis text.  It began as a compilation of teaching materials I’ve developed over the last three decades, teaching in Certificate Programs in New York, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Berlin, The Netherlands, and England.

As the LMA teaching community knows, we have limped along for years with copies from a hundred different sources.  And so, it made sense to turn the compilation into a proper text, primarily designed for use in university movement analysis courses.… Read More

The Value of Movement Study

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The diversity of applications of movement analysis showcased at the June conference in Montreal was awesome.  And that is just the beginning….

As the sociologist Bryan S. Turner noted:  “The body is at once the most solid, the most elusive, illusory, concrete, metaphorical, every present and ever distant thing.”  Surely the same can be said of bodily movement – it is omnipresent in human life, yet elusive to perceive and interpret. Nevertheless, it has enormous potential.

According to journalist Olive Moore:  “This science of movement study is so remarkable that at first its significance is difficult to grasp. … Read More

Embodied Decision Making

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In my discussion of Movement Pattern Analysis (MPA) at the public lecture session in Montreal, I aimed to demonstrate how knowledge from the field of dance became relevant and valued in the business world.

After introducing the creators of MPA – Rudolf Laban, F.C. Lawrence, and Warren Lamb – I explained that body movement is different from body language.  Body language is based on interpreting gestures and fixed positions such as “crossed arms indicate rejection.”  In MPA, the meaning is in the movement.… Read More

Applications of Movement Analysis

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The Montreal event included a full morning of various presentations on applications of movement analysis for the public.  The formal lectures, delivered in French or English with simultaneous translation, covered a fascinating array of disciplines and approaches, both qualitative and quantitative.

Brigitte LaChance, a Canadian physical therapist, discussed what Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) contributes to her rehabilitative work with seriously injured clients.  Odile Cazes, a French psychometrician, described how she applies Functional Analysis of the Dancing Body (AFCDM) in training osteopaths in hands-on techniques. … Read More

Observing Movement from Two Perspectives

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The June gathering in Montreal of American, Canadian, and French movement analysts provided many opportunities for moving, observing, and talking together.  This was a daunting enterprise, for not only were participants navigating between two systems of movement analysis but also two languages – English and French.

To facilitate this exchange, there was a full day of movement workshops based on the themes of flow, weight, and relationship to space.  On the Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) side, Kathie and Pat Debenham, Cate Deicher, Tricia Bauman, and Martha Eddy led sessions respectively exploring weight and flow, combinations of weight and flow, space effort, vision and fluid systems. … Read More