The “Laban Prototypes” Project

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In 2008, Professor Madeleine Scott and I ran a choreutics-based research project at Ohio University.  The project examined Laban’s claim that fragments of the choreutic forms (aka spatial scales and rings) compose a fundamental alphabet of human movement.

The examination had two parts.  First, we set out to duplicate some of the choreutic forms that Laban represented as geometrical line drawings.  Motion capture technology is able to produce a similar kind of record, for it captures the dancer’s movement as a linear tracery of light, allowing one to see the trace-forms of the dance without the dancer. … 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

Decoding Choreutics – Key #1

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Another example of Laban’s double vision is his concept of the kinesphere and dynamosphere as dual domains of human movement.  To represent both domains, Laban utilizes the cube.

With regard to the kinesphere, Laban uses the cube quite literally.  Its corners, edges, and internal diagonals serve as a kind of longitude and latitude for mapping movement in the space around the dancer’s body.

 

With regard to the dynamosphere, Laban uses the cube formally to represent patterns of effort change.  This shift in how the model should be interpreted is complicated further by Laban’s use of direction symbols to stand for effort qualities and combinations.… Read More

Was Laban Seeing Double?

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More than any of his other books in English, Choreutics reveals Laban’s dual vision as a dance artist and movement scientist.  The forthcoming course, “Decoding Choreutics,” examines Laban’s double vision from more than one angle.

For example, Choreutics and the whole fabric of Laban’s space harmony theory can be seen as a design source for dance.    The various scales and “rhythmic circles” can be mined as abstract patterns for movement creation.  In this sense, Choreutics is analogous to various design sources utilized by Art Nouveau artists at the turn of the 20th century.… Read More

Chasing Laban

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In Choreutics, Laban mentions in passing a dizzying array of subjects —

Pythagoras, crystals, Lissajous curves, symmetry, semitones and overtones, lemniscates, tetrahedra,  the Golden Mean, range of motion….

Through many years of studying Laban’s published and unpublished writings and drawings, I have often found it necessary to “bone up” on various subjects that he only mentions in passing.  This is not easy, because Laban seldom specifies his sources.  Yet they must have been substantial.

Indeed Walter Sorrell notes, “I only know from hearsay that Rudolf Laban was a voracious reader whose thirst for knowledge embraced everything from religion and philosophy to literature and science.” … Read More

Decoding Laban’s Choreutics III

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One thing many readers have difficulty grappling with in Choreutics is Laban’s geometricizing of the dancer’s space.  Laban’s first career as a visual artist helps to explain this use of geometry.

Visual artists have employed geometrical schemes to capture human proportion and motion since Egyptian times.   These schemes have differed.  The Egyptians used a flat grid; Byzantine artists employed a series of concentric circles; and medieval artists superimposed ornamental shapes like triangles and stars on the human body to set contours and directions of movement, albeit in a highly stylized way.… Read More

Decoding Laban’s Choreutics II

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In the previous blog, I quoted Rudolf Laban’s characterization of choreutics as “the art, or the science” of movement study.  Our postmodern perspective draws a hard line between art and science.  But this was not the case when Laban was coming of age at the turn-of-the-century.

Munich, Laban’s first port-of-call when he began to study visual art, is a case in point.  Artists and scientists happily commingled here, and ideas drawn from science fertilized the theories and practices of artists, and vice versa.… Read More

Decoding Laban’s Choreutics I

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Choreutics is in many ways a straight-forward presentation of Laban’s movement theories.  However, more than any of Laban’s other books in English, Choreutics  is colored by Laban’s worldview.

It is recognized now that there is no such thing as pure objectivity; every theory is colored by its proposer’s experiences and beliefs.  Consequently, Laban’s worldview is not irrelevant to understanding ideas set forth in Choreutics.

In this series of blogs, I sketch aspects of Laban’s life and times and their potential influence on his theories of movement. … Read More

More Mysteries of Laban’s Masterpiece, Choreutics

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Laban intended for Choreutics, written in 1938-39, to be his introduction to the English reading public. With the outbreak of World War II, Laban was forced to postpone publication. After the war, however, Laban inexplicably abandoned the manuscript altogether.

Choreutics is not the only book that Laban abandoned, but it is the only manuscript that has vanished without a trace from the Rudolf Laban Archive, a vast collection of Laban’s writings and drawings from the final two decades of his career, now held by the National Resource Centre for Dance at the University of Surrey.… Read More

Movement Is the Life of Space

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The quotation above has always been one of my favorites from Laban’s masterwork, Choreutics. I like Laban’s assertion because it encourages us to think about space in a different way.

“Dead space does not exist,” Laban continues, “for there is neither space without movement nor movement without space.” It’s a little hard to wrap one’s head around this. We are accustomed to thinking of space as a gap between objects that are stable, real, and palpable. Space, on the other hand, is empty and void.… Read More