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

Comparing Movement Analysis Practices

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As one of 12 Laban Movement Analysts who participated in a 2014 research project comparing our observations with those of 12 experts in the French system of Functional Analysis of the Dancing Body (AFCMD), I was keen to hear the preliminary results of the study.

The presentation of the project by co-researchers Nicole Harbonnier-Topin, Genevieve Dussault, and Catherine Ferri at the Montreal conference in early June did not disappoint.  Here is a brief report on their findings.

The study focused on making explicit the “tacit knowledge” employed by expert movement analysts.   … Read More

International Movement Analysis Encounter

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During the first week of June, I participated in unique collegial exchange with fourteen other movement analysts from the U.S., Canada, and France. Hosted by the Dance Department of the University of Quebec at Montreal, the seminar provided an opportunity for comparative and comprehensive study of two approaches to qualitative movement analysis: Laban Movement Analysis and Functional Analysis of the Dancing Body, a system developed in France and little known in the English-speaking world.

The purpose of the Montreal seminar was threefold: 1) to renew perspectives and the analytical discourse about the dancing body, 2) to explore movement analysis’s potential to enhance and refine the narration of aesthetics in performing arts, and 3) to open up exchange and discussion on the contributions of movement analysis to the fields of dance, theatre, music, kinesiology, ethnology, nonverbal communication, and therapy.… Read More

Reflections on Decoding Choreutics

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Choreutics has always been my favorite book by Rudolf Laban.  Since first reading parts of it as an undergraduate, it has inspired and mystified me by its occasional and seemingly abrupt shifts between systematic description and cosmic speculation.  Laban hints at a deeper significance in human movement, but how he gets from A to B is elusive, thought-provoking, and exciting.

My most recent re-reading was occasioned by leading a correspondence course on Choreutics, accompanied by  21 curious and acute readers.  I have not dispelled all mysteries as the result of this experience, but I have come to terms with what Laban was attempting to do. … Read More

Diagonal Corridors of Action

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For many years, I have been puzzled by Laban’s emphasis on the cubic diagonals.  He has embedded these oblique internal lines, which connect opposite corners of the cube, in his theories of both space and effort.

Spatially, diagonals represent the most mobilizing lines of motion, the slanted trajectories that lead to flying and falling. In addition, the cubic diagonals serve as axes for all the most familiar Choreutic sequences:  the Primary and A and B Scales.  The girdle, the axis scales, the polar triangles, and transverse 3-rings are all situated alongside or around these oblique lines, forming a variety of movement shapes encompassing an empty corridor of action.… Read More

Choreutics – The Whole Enchilada

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Like many movement analysts, I’ve always thought that choreutics was synonymous with space harmony.  But now I see that choreutics is not just about space.  For Laban, choreutics is the whole enchilada.  It is body, effort, shape, and space – movement as an integration of the physical, psychological, and spiritual.

I will be incorporating this new perspective in the forthcoming Octa workshop, Bringing Choreutics to Life.  The focus will still be on space, but with the aim of using body, effort, and shape to experience more fully the patterned trace-forms that Laban identified as a beneficial physical practice.… Read More

Bringing Choreutics to Life

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In his theoretical masterpiece Choreutics, Rudolf Laban writes that  “getting the ‘feel’ of a movement gives real understanding of it.”  Thus the upcoming Octa workshop, Bringing Choreutics to Life, is all about understanding movement by moving.

Laban’s notions of space, time, and energy are quite abstract.  The complex geometrical models he developed to represent these ideas are hard to grasp.  But Laban’s movement theories can always be linked to concrete movement.  His ideas can be embodied.

Bringing choreutic forms to life requires imagination. … Read More

Choreutics – Decoded!

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Adventurous readers on four continents have now completed my six-week correspondence course, “Decoding Rudolf Laban’s Masterpiece, Choreutics.” As Laban remarks in the final chapter, exhaustive exploration of the “immense domain of space and movement” will demand “the collaboration of generations still to come.”

I guess that means us.

For myself, the next step is demonstrating how to take Choreutic theory into practice in the forthcoming Octa workshop, Bringing Choreutics to Life.

To my fellow Choreutics decoders, I posed the following questions:

Of the many ideas presented in Choreutics, what has stimulated your imagination? … Read More

Rudolf Laban – Symmetry Freak

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Rudolf Laban was crazy about symmetry. His first career as a visual artist spanned the period from 1899 to 1919. During this period, Art Nouveau, with its focus on two-dimensional pattern, was in fashion.   Surviving works show that Laban worked in this style and was familiar with symmetry operations as a means of generating pattern.

When Laban turned his artist’s eyes to dance, he realized the power of symmetry for generating three-dimensional patterns.   Virtually all his Choreutic forms and scales are highly symmetrical.… Read More

Space Games

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I have space toys, but Laban liked to play space games. He played one game over and over and over and over again and again ….

 

His favorite game went something like this: start at one corner of a polyhedron – it can be a cube, octahedron, or icosahedron. Then trace a line touching every corner only once and return to the corner where you began.

 

Unpublished drawings in the Laban Archive in  England show that Laban played this game over and over again.… Read More