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Unpublished drawings in the Laban Archive in  England show that Laban played this game over and over again. When he found a pattern that he liked and one that made bodily sense, it became a Choreutic sequence.

 

 

Too often, Choreutic forms are taught through imitation and students are expected to accept the sequence as something “good for you.” Where is the fun in that?

 

In “Bringing Choreutics to Life” we approach Laban’s geometrical sequences with a sense of play. We will work with props and music; we will sing while we do them; we’ll turn them into folk dances and swordplay; and we will search for fragments of Choreutic forms in dance, mime, and circus acts. In short, we will have serious fun!

 

Find out more about the Octa….

 

 

 

 

Space Toys

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Mel Brooks had Spaceballs (a Star Wars parody); I have Space Toys.

I’m not kidding. One way to bring Choreutics to life is with good geometrical models. Whenever I’m in a toy shop (or the children’s section of a museum shop), I’m always on the lookout for the newest geometrical toys.

Space Toys via Movescape Center

To be honest, I’m always on the lookout. At the moment, geometrical forms are fashionable as decorative items. I just went to Hobby Lobby to buy pastel paper and walked out with a stellated icosahedron….

 

In “Bringing Choreutics to Life” I will share some of my “finds.” I will also show participants how to make models out of inexpensive materials.

 

Come play with my space toys.

 

Find out 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.

Decoding Choreutics with Movescape

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.

 

According to the theory of empathy, we project our visceral and kinesthetic feelings into the objects we perceive.  In order to be expressive, the art object must possess certain formal qualities, but it need not be represent anything in particular.

 

Art Nouveau artist August Endell went on to spell out the empathic reactions aroused by various kinds of lines.  Straight and curved lines, narrow and wide lines, short and long lines, and the direction of the line were all correlated with various sensations.  For example, length or shortness of a line are functions of time, while the thickness and thinness are functions of tension.

 

I’ve been unable to find a full description of Endell’s system, but it seems to me that the germ of Laban’s theory of effort affinities can be linked back to his days as an Art Nouveau artist.  The fact that effort notation postdates the development of direction symbols suggests that Laban may have assumed that the movement dynamics were inherent in the spatial form.

 

Want more clues for deepening your understanding of Laban’s theories?  Register for “Decoding Laban’s Choreutics,” beginning March 26.

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.

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

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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 19th and early 20th centuries.

 movescape-Decoding-Choreutis

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.

Movement and Managing Success and Failure

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In Ambition, Gilbert Brim observes that “we look for the challenges that are right for us, for what we can just manage, and in this way form and shape our lives.” For most of us, however, identifying the “right challenges” is a matter of trial and error. It involves not only assessing the situation, but also assessing our own capabilities.

Successful businessman on the finishing line of a trackThe latter assessment is the more difficult, for as the novelist Thomas Mann notes, “Our consciousness is feeble; only in moments of unusual clarity and vision do we really know about ourselves.”

Nevertheless, most personality tests depend upon self report and two assumptions:  a) that we know ourselves, and  b) that we are willing to answer questions honestly. While there is much to be said for self-reflection, it has its limits. To paraphrase the poet Robert Burns, “Oh would some Power give us the gift to see ourselves as others see us! It would from many a blunder free us.”

For this reason, the upcoming Embodied Decision Making course has two parts.The first part is a movement workshop that explores the elements of effort and shape experientially. The aim is to develop a “felt sense” of these movement elements and to tap this bodily awareness as a tool to reach personal goals.

The second part of Embodied Decision Making draws upon the use of movement analysis to articulate personal patterns of movement behavior objectively and to construct an individual decision-making profile for course participants. By combining first person somatic experiences with third person objective analysis, the Embodied Decision Making course aims to help participants identify the right challenges, ones that are matched to the individual’s motivations and capabilities.  Learn more….

 

Movement: Becoming Versus Being

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Movement is a process of change. This seems self-evident. And yet, when the analytical brain is focused on motion and change, understanding breaks up the flowing continuity into successive and distinct positions and states. What was dynamic becomes static, what was becoming becomes an invariable being.

One of the things I most appreciated about Warren Lamb was his insistence that movement is a process of change. The dynamic qualities of effort and shape must be observed to vary. A movement is never simply strong – it is becoming stronger. The moving body cannot not simply occupy a position in space – it must shape shift towards and away from various areas of the kinesphere or become static.

Lamb’s movement classes were deceptively simple. He never taught complex dance sequences. Instead he insisted on whole-bodied involvement in which effort and shape kept changing. You never walked out having mastered a set of physical tricks. But you did emerge with a deeper experience understanding of the inner volition needed to move dynamically through space.

The link Lamb found between movement and motivation is only plausible when bodily motion is appreciated as a process. The drive to act necessitates change – it is about becoming, not being. In the upcoming Embodied Decision Making course, we start from the somatic experience of effort and shape as processes of change. Then we build on the “felt sense” of effort and shape variation to explore how these physical processes link with cognitive processes.  Learn more….

Embodiment: What Goes Around, Comes Around

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Vancouver Canucks VS. Calgary FlamesA wise man once observed that prayers are always answered. But what comes to you is not what you think you want, but what you embody.

Movement Pattern Analysis developed by Warren Lamb provides an objective picture of what an individual embodies and how individual patterns of movement are linked to decision-making processes.

Lamb found that all of us have a preferred pattern of taking action, and we will act in accordance with those preferences whenever we can. Power comes from understanding your preferred pattern and how to use it most effectively.

Movement Pattern Analysts never tell clients that they must try to change their movement patterns or their decision-making preferences. Ian Marks, Chief Executive of Trebor, a British company that used Movement Pattern Analysis profiles for over 25 years, summarized this perfectly. He noted, “We have found that people discover there is no good profile or bad profile once they learn their strengths and how to use those, and when they learn how to cover for their weaknesses.”

We can’t promise to answer your prayers, but we can help you understand what you embody in the Labor Day course, Embodied Decision Making.  Find out more….

Extending Laban’s Notions of Embodied Cognition

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By observing that “the dancer moves, not only from place to place, but also from mood to mood,” Laban established human movement as a psychophysical phenomenon. He went on to relate the “movement from mood to mood” –manifested as effort variation – to psychological functions of giving Attention, forming an Intention, and making a Commitment to embodied action.

Laban’s protege, Warren Lamb, reasoned that there must also be correlations between the “movement from place to place” and psychological functions. He found the following associations.iStock_000061290386_Medium

“Horizontally-oriented movement puts the performer in touch with what is going on around him,” Lamb noted. Thus variations of spreading and enclosing in the horizontal plane are associated with giving Attention.

“Vertical orientation then emphasizes where he stands in relation to whatever he is in touch with,” Lamb continued. Thus variations in rising and descending in the vertical plane are associated with forming an Intention.

“Finally,” according to Lamb, “comes the Sagittal orientation, a form of decision to advance or retire from the subject matter.”  Thus variations in advancing and retreating are associated with making a Commitment to action.

Find out more about how effort and shape relate to processes of acting in the world at the Embodied Decision Making seminar, scheduled for Labor Day weekend.

The Mind in the Body

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According to Rudolf Laban, “The dancer moves, not only from place to place but also from mood to mood.” This simple statement establishes movement as a psychophysical phenomenon. Indeed, Laban was ahead of the embodied cognition theorists, for he recognized that bodily movement happens in two domains – the physical domain of visible space and the psychological domain of thought and feeling.

iStock_000063155001_MediumThoughts and feelings cannot be observed directly, but they can be inferred from how a particular action is performed. Laban conceived the how of human movement as effort — the application of varying qualities of kinetic energy. He went on to hypothesize relationships between the motion factors that comprise human effort and psychological functions. For example, he related the motion factor of space to giving Attention, noting “the predominant tendency here is to orientate oneself… either in a direct way or in a circumspective, flexible one.”

 

Laban associated the motion factor of weight with Intention, observing that “the desire to do a certain thing may take hold of one sometimes powerfully and firmly, sometimes gently and slightly.”

Finally Laban linked the motion factor of time with Commitment, commenting that “decisions can be made either unexpectedly and suddenly … or they may be developed gradually by sustaining conditions over a period of time.”

At the upcoming Embodied Decision Making seminar, we explore these intriguing correlations through movement, observation, discussion, and self-reflection. Find out more…