In the preface to Choreutics, Laban defines “choreography” as the “designing or writing of circles.” While we use the word today to designate composing dances, Laban was obviously familiar with the origins of the term, which come from two Greek words – khoros and graphein.
Khoros refers both to the Greek chorus and to the circular space in which they danced, while graphein obviously means to write. Laban extends the “writing of circles” to mean notating dance and movement and uses this as a way to mention his own system of dance notation.
Choreography has another meaning for Laban. In a slightly modified form, Choreographie is the title of an earlier book, published in German in 1926. As Vera Maletic notes, “A well-informed translation and annotation of this book is long overdue.” This is because this work presents key aspects of what has come to be known as Choreutics and Space Harmony. In fact, Maletic believes that Choreographie was the first outline of Choreutics, which can be taken as its second volume.”
The English reading public must wait for a well-informed translation of Choreographie. But we have the second volume. Join me in decoding this masterwork in the upcoming Tetra seminar. Learn more….