Movement Health – Laban-style

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dance, movement, theory, laban

As the benefits of physical motion are gaining recognition and undergoing further scrutiny, it is interesting to see how Laban characterized movement health.  He wrote, “A healthy human being can have complete control of his kinesphere and dynamosphere….  The essential thing is that we should neither have preference for nor avoid certain movements because of physical or psychical restrictions.”

Clearly, Laban views movement as healthy for both the body and mind.  He prescribes a rich range of motion, noting “we should be able to do every imaginable movement and then select those which seem to be the most suitable and desirable for our own nature.”… Read More

Mixing Business, Physical Exercise, and Creativity

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walking, business, exercise

The Wall Street Journal has also been covering the health benefits of walking, notably the walk-and-talk business meeting.  According to their September 13th article, “the health benefits are real for people who take walking meetings; their work gets more creative, too.”

These walking meetings are typically held with two or three people over a set route and period.  Given mounting research on the health benefits of being more mobile at work, the walking meeting provides a way to integrate movement with other work activities.… Read More

Good News for Movement Analysts

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Good news has been scarce in this election year. But don’t despair, movement analysts, for the benefit of movement is gaining traction in the national press!

Time magazine, for example, featured “The Exercise Cure” as its cover story in the September 12th issue.  The writer notes that doctors have been advising patients to exercise for some time.  But the prescription has been generic.  Too much repetitive motion can be damaging, but too little movement is also unhealthy.  So what kind of movement is healthy and how much exercise is “just right?”… Read More

Beyond First Impressions

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The very first time we encounter a stranger, we derive an impression based on the person’s physical attributes and body language.  Then rapidly and without conscious or logical control, we form a judgment  – is the person positive, negative, or neutral?

The capacity to make snap judgments is probably essential to our survival.  Yet first impressions are notoriously unreliable and often prejudicial.  The real character of an individual is revealed over time – not in a single encounter, not in a single action, but in a moving pattern and embodied way of being.… Read More

Movement Patterns, Expression, and Meaning

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Movement occurs in patterns, and these patterns are both expressive and meaningful.  In 2017, MoveScape Center’s Red Thread offerings focus on the patterned aspects of movement behavior – in everyday activity, in effort, and in space.

Everyday patterns.  The Red Thread journey begins with the Tetra seminar, “Introduction to Movement Pattern Analysis.”  Based on the work of Warren Lamb, this three-day course, scheduled for mid-March in the Denver area, demonstrates how movement patterns reveal individual decision-making processes.   Participants learn how to observe and interpret movement patterns. … Read More

“Summer of Dance” Revisited

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In my September blogs, I praised the Denver Art Museum’s “Summer of Dance” – four separate exhibitions all focused on American dance.   However, I noted that the Denver Post’s art critic disagreed, claiming that dance was a far too trivial topic for a “serious museum” to tackle.

I suggested that the critic’s dismissive comments sprang from the fact that the real value of dance is best understood by dancing.  And dance is not really embedded in the lives of everyday Americans.… Read More

Laban and Range of Motion

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Laban’s Choreutic forms both mirror and challenge the natural range of motion of the human body.  As Laban was designing these movement sequences, he drew upon his first career as a visual artist.  It’s clear from his figure drawings that he had studied anatomy.  And he applied this knowledge in theorizing the shapes the moving limbs can trace in space.

As I note in The Harmonic Structure of Movement, Music, and Dance, Laban does not distort the proportion of the body itself. … Read More

Moving in Three Dimensions

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Human beings have big heads, and biomechanically speaking, this is a headache.  Standing up freed our arms and hands and opened new spatial horizons.  But it also means we must cope with balancing our heavy heads against the constant pull of gravity.

Irmgard Bartenieff always felt that homo sapiens are still working out the possibilities of movement in three-dimensional space.  Evolution has given us greater potential than we have figured out how to use.  And this is where Laban’s Choreutic theories come in.… Read More

Seven-rings R Us

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Laban’s Mixed Seven-rings are an important extension of his theory of movement harmony.  But they are not just important theoretically – they are quite challenging to perform.  And, because of their harmonic analogies, they offer novel approaches for movement invention.

In the forthcoming Ico workshop, Cate Deicher and I draw upon Laban’s unpublished writings to facilitate learning and embodying the mixed seven-rings.  Because these trace-forms are drawn from the better-known axis and girdle scales, we will start with reviewing these forms. … Read More

Five-rings Anyone?

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Laban moved into new Choreutic territory with five-rings, and consequently they are fascinating to embody.   Primarily Laban built his space harmony scales around the cubic diagonals.  But the peripheral and transverse five-rings that Cate Deicher and I will be teaching in the Advanced Space Harmony workshop are built around the planar diameters.

The peripheral five-rings create pentagonal shapes around corners of the icosahedron that both match and challenge range of motion for gestures of the arms and legs.

The transverse five-rings trace star-like shapes around corners of the icosahedron. … Read More