Decoding Choreutics – Key #1

Posted on March 8, 2016 by Carol-Lynne Moore

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.

Decoding Choreutics via Movescape

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.

When Laban wrote Choreutics in 1938-39, the effort symbols had not yet been created. Consequently, his dual use of direction symbols to stand in for effort obscures the discussion, but not entirely.

To decode the models discussed in Chapters 3, 6, and 9, it is only necessary to translate the direction symbols into effort qualities and combinations. Once this is done, Laban’s discussion of dynamospheric patterns becomes clear.

Want more keys? Register for the correspondence course, “Decoding Laban’s Choreutics,” beginning March 26.

“God Geometricizes….” Said Madame Blavatsky

Posted on March 3, 2016 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Artistic and scientific circles were not the only circles that overlapped in the fin de siècle period. European artists of the period were also involved in various secret spiritual societies that flourished in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

For example, the painter Wassily Kandinsky was an ardent follower of Theosophy, one of the occult spiritual movements of the period, and one that was very attractive to artists. As religious historian Mircea Eliade notes, avant garde European artists “utilized the occult as a powerful weapon in their rebellion against the bourgeois establishment and its ideology.”

Novel spiritual practices were not merely a form of rebellion for the European avant garde. The occult revival also gave artists new ways to think about the nature of art as it moved beyond representation and symbolism toward formalism and abstraction. Kandinsky drew upon precepts of Theosophy, such as the quote above by Theosophy guru, Madame Blavatsky, to theorize a spiritual visual art composed of only form and color. By these means alone, Kandinsky wrote, the artist could “cause vibrations in the soul.”

Laban was also attracted to the occult. During his career as a painter (1899- 1919), he supposedly associated with three esoteric groups: the Free Masons, the Ordo Templi Orientis, and the Rosicrucians. The extent of Laban’s involvement is a matter of speculation. Nevertheless, in Choreutics, his treatise on the geometry of human movement, Laban does acknowledge that his subject “necessitates a certain spiritual emphasis.”

What does this mean? Find out more in the correspondence course, “Decoding Choreutics,” beginning March 26.

Decoding Laban’s Choreutics III

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Carol-Lynne Moore

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.

However, as I explain in The Harmonic Structure of Movement, Music, and Dance, the use of geometry to realistically depict a three-dimensional moving body reached its apex in the Renaissance in the work of two artists: Albrecht Durer and Leonardo da Vinci. Both developed geometrical schemes that became part of academic art training and, despite the demise of the great European art academies, are still used today.

In Durer’s approach, simple solid shapes such as cubes, are superimposed on parts of a posed figure. These simple shapes can be tilted, rotated, and redrawn in proper proportion to deal with the visible changes in proportion that occur when the body is posed in various positions.

Leonardo’s scheme focuses more on bodily motion. He reasoned that the circle is the correct pattern of movement of the human body. These circles become visible in the circling of the body around its own center and the limbs around their joints.

Laban draws on both schemes in his theorizing of the dancer’s space. Find out more in the forthcoming Tetra course, “Decoding Laban’s Choreutics.”

Decoding Laban’s Choreutics II

Posted on February 9, 2016 by Carol-Lynne Moore

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.

Hermann Obrist, with whom both Laban and Kandinsky studied, is a case in point. One of the most visionary Art Nouveau artists, Obrist started his career as a botanist. Obrist’s protégé, August Endell, initially pursued a scholarly career, studying philosophy and psychology at the University of Munich. After turning to art, he became an eloquent advocate for new approaches to design.

Meanwhile, German experimental psychologists such as Wilhelm Wundt, Gustav Fechner, and Hermann Helmholtz were studying the psychological and physiological process underlying human perception. Aesthetic theories put forward by Obrist, Endell, and others drew upon these discoveries.

When Laban moved on to Paris to study art, he would have encountered more confluences between art and science. For example Eadweard Muybridge’s instantaneous photographs of human and animal motion were meant to be used as references for artists depicting movement. Muybridge’s photos inspired the French physiologist, Etienne-Jules Marey. Marey was concerned to chart and measure the movements of the “animal machine.” To do so, he developed his own photographic approach, known as “chronophotography.” In turn, Marey’s photographic images inspired artists ranging from the Italian futurists to Marcel Duchamp.

In keeping with the spirit of early modernism, Laban’s Choreutics does not represent the vision of an artist or a scientist. It presents the vision of someone who is both an artist and a scientist. Explore Laban’s dual vision more deeply in the Tetra course, “Decoding Laban’s Choreutics.” Find out more….

Decoding Laban’s Choreutics I

Posted on February 4, 2016 by Carol-Lynne Moore

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. This requires a creative reconstruction, for Laban made no effort to articulate his worldview, and the modern world in which he came of age is in many regards foreign to our post-modern world.

Laban turned 20 in 1899, as Europe teetered on the edge of a new century. This turn of the century period was pervaded by an atmosphere of optimistic rationality. The world, largely controlled by colonial European nations, was at peace. New discoveries in science sustained a conviction that human beings possess the potential to alter any conditions that might threaten civilization. Ongoing waves of industrialization increased material prosperity, while Enlightenment values and the rule by law vouchsafed greater civil rights for individuals.

Growing up in Bratislava in eastern Europe, Laban was on the edge of these changes. The multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire was not a democracy. Industrialization came later here, and Laban was able to observe its negative impact on work life and folk traditions. Through holidays spent in the Balkans with his father, the military governor of Herzegovina, Laban was also introduced to religious traditions and rituals beyond Christianity. This exotic background seems to have sensitized Laban to tensions beneath the seeming triumphs of European culture. Perhaps this is what led him to write:

“The art, or the science, dealing with the analysis and synthesis of movement, we call ‘choreutics.’ Through its investigation and various exercises, choreutics attempts to stop the progress of disintegrating into disunity.”

What message does Laban’s “choreutics” have for us today? Discover for yourself in the forthcoming Tetra correspondence course, “Decoding Laban’s Choreutics.”

More Mysteries of Laban’s Masterpiece, Choreutics

Posted on January 21, 2016 by Carol-Lynne Moore

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.

The Archive holds other book-length manuscripts. For example, I read Motion Study, a much longer first draft of the work that became Effort. I found multiple drafts of Effort and Recovery, which was slated for publication by MacDonald & Evans near the end of Laban’s life, but never published. I also read a partial typescript of Conflict and Harmony between Man and Woman, a collaborative work by William Carpenter and Laban integrating Jungian typology and effort theory.

However, though the Archivist and I searched, there were no manuscripts of Choreutics, hand written or typewritten, partial or complete. Perhaps they were lost, or sent to the publisher. Perhaps there is a good explanation. But the absence of Laban’s original work makes it impossible to discern how much Lisa Ullmann, as the editor, may have changed the work.

For example, each of the first 10 chapters concludes with a “Fact of Space- Movement.” To me, many of these concluding paragraphs seem more like philosophical speculations than facts. Did Laban see these as facts? Or is this something Lisa Ullmann added?

These are the types of questions to be considered in “Decoding Laban’s Choreutics.” Find out more…..

“Space Harmony” – A Misnomer?

Posted on January 19, 2016 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Rudolf Laban liked to coin new words to designate the movement theories he was developing. During the very fertile period of his career in Germany (1919-1929) he coined two words: “Choreutics” —dealing with the spatial forms of movement, and “Eukinetics” —dealing with qualities of kinetic energy.

Laban spent the final two decades of his career in England (1938-1958). During this period he Anglicized his movement terminology. His Eukinetic theories were presented under the term “Effort,” and Choreutics became known in Laban training programs as “Space Harmony.”

Close examination of Laban’s posthumously published masterpiece, Choreutics, suggests that “Space Harmony” is a misnomer. As presented in this work, “Choreutics” does not deal only with space. It also addresses the body, effort, and shape.

Indeed, only four of the twelve chapters concentrate on spatial form. Three chapters address the body, four chapters discuss effort, and one chapter introduces notions of shape.

When carefully examined, it is clear that Choreutics is a description of movement harmony, not “Space Harmony.” Laban states this clearly in the Preface, where he defines “choreutics” as “the practical study of the various forms of (more or less) harmonized movement.”

In “Decoding Laban’s Choreutics,” the Tetra seminar beginning in March, I take participants on a guided journey through this mysterious book. This journey of discovery can be done without leaving the house, but not without leaving one’s arm chair.

Find out more…

Movement Harmony – Fact or Fiction?

Posted on September 22, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Laban’s assertion that human movement has a harmonic structure analogous to music has vexed scholars ranging from Suzanne Langer to Lincoln Kirstein. In general, the notion of movement harmony has been viewed as an artifact of Laban’s mystical philosophy. In my view, however, harmony is a useful theoretical construct for explaining certain empirical aspects of human movement.

For example, aestheticians have categorized the arts as either spatial or temporal. However, dance is a hybrid art. The dance unfolds in both space and time, both for the dancer and for the observer. By extension, the same holds true for all human movement. In reality, space and time combine.

For analytical purposes, Laban divided his theory in two parts – Choreutics addresses the spatial aspects of movement while Eukinetics deals with temporal factors. Yet Laban freely admits this is an artificial division, for in reality spatial form and dynamic stress “are entirely inseparable from each other.” And this is where the notions of harmony comes in.

Harmony brings things that are different into accord by allowing parts to be related to the whole or to one another. In normal human movement, body, effort, and space cohere in meaningful action. Unless disease or injury interrupts this coherence, voluntary body movement occurs automatically, without constant, conscious intervention.

Human movement is a psychophysical phenomenon, an integration of mind and body. This is its most remarkable feature. While we cannot fully explain the mechanisms through which this integration occurs, it is a fact, not a fiction.

“Harmony” is the term Laban chose for describing the seemingly natural coherence of body, space, and effort. He envisioned movement study as an integration of art and science, analysis and synthesis. The study of movement harmony was meant to “stop the process of disintegrating into disunity.” For in Laban’s eyes, movement “with all its significance for the human personality, can have regenerating effect on our individual and social forms of life.”

The forthcoming college text, Meaning in Motion: Introducing Laban Movement Analysis incorporates discussion of Laban’s fundamental notions of movement harmony.

What is Eukinetics?

Posted on September 18, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Dance is a hybrid art form, traversing space and progressing through time. In its temporal aspects, dance has much in common with its sister time art, music. Like music, dance has rhythm, phrasing, and dynamics. Eukinetics is the term Rudolf Laban coined to capture these temporal elements.

Laban created the term Eukinetics from two Greek root words – “eu” meaning beautiful or harmonious and “kinetikos” meaning movement. During the final two decades of his career in England, Laban dropped this exotic word and adopted the more common English term, “effort.” In turn, his interests shifted from dance to a broader concern with human movement in general. As Laban wrote:

“A person’s efforts are visibly expressed in the rhythms of his bodily motion. It thus becomes necessary to study these rhythms, and to extract from them those elements which will help us to compile a systematic survey of the forms effort can take in human action.”

As an analytical study, Laban’s Eukinetic/effort theory delineates the elements of kinetic energy and how these elements are organized in dynamic bodily actions. Moreover, as with Choreutics, Laban’s Eukinetic theory goes beyond mere description of natural movement to designate harmonic effort sequences. Creative explorations of these effort patterns are presented in my forthcoming book, Meaning in Motion: Introducing Laban Movement Analysis.

In fact, Laban insisted that dance, indeed all human movement, has a harmonic structure analogous to musical harmony. This has proven to be one of the most vexing of Laban’s assertions. However, this observation may yet prove to have great heuristic value. Consequently, my next blog explores the notion of movement harmony in more detail.

What is Rudolf Laban’s Choreutics?

Posted on September 15, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

In the preface to his book, Choreutics, Laban links his modern studies of movement to Pythagorean mathematics, notably musical scales and the “harmonic relations” of geometrical forms such as the right triangle and circle. Laban appears to have coined the term Choreutics from two Greek root words: “khoreia” (dancing in unison) and “eu” (beautiful, harmonious).

Laban goes on to define Choreutics as “the practical study of harmonised movement.” Latter day colleagues of Laban’s, such as Valerie Preston-Dunlop and Vera Maletic, have delineated Choreutics respectively as the “spatial organization for dance” and “the theory and practice of ordering movement in space.”

Choreutics, then, deals with the spatial aspects of movement, with its organization and order. As an analytical study, Choreutics delineates the natural paths that the limbs of the body trace on the space around the body, paths that Laban calls “trace-forms.” However, in keeping with its Pythagorean roots, Laban’s Choreutic theory goes beyond mere description of natural movement to designate harmonic spatial sequences analogous to musical scales.

In creating these harmonic designs, Laban utilizes his artistic understanding of human anatomy, proportion, and range of motion. Moreover, he draws on his Art Nouveau background to generate spatial patterns that are highly symmetrical.

Art Nouveau designers stylized the curves of natural forms such as butterflies, flowers, and leaves to create beautiful two-dimensional patterns. Laban’s space harmony scales are similar. Laban has taken the curves of natural movements and geometricized them, creating “harmonic” three-dimensional patterns.

Space plays a role in movement harmony. But so does time. And this is where Laban’s Eukinetic theories come into play. I address Eukinetics in my next blog.