Dance and Conflict

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The Dance Studies Association (DSA) has chosen “Dance and Conflict” as the theme of its conference this summer in Malta. This promises to be a huge international gathering now that the Congress on Research in Dance (CORD) and the Society of Dance History Scholars (SDHS) have merged to form DSA.

I’m quite excited by this conference theme because dance is often considered to be a trivial pastime. The ways in which dance can bring people together and enable them to overcome differences is often overlooked. Both the paper my daughter will be giving at this conference, as well as my own, investigate the power of dance to build social bonds.

 

My daughter has been conducting ethnographic research in Honolulu, looking at the small breakdancing community there.  She has found deep bonds within this community, despite the fact that breakdancing is a competitive dance form in which crews battle for prizes and acclaim.

 

My paper addresses the “Dancing Classrooms” program developed by Pierre Dulaine, a competitive ballroom dancer.  Since 1994, this program has helped middle school children in New York City gain a sense of pride, confidence, and respect for others through learning ballroom dance.

 

Beyond that, Dulaine has taken the program to Jaffa, Israel, to teach Jewish and Palestinian children to dance together, and to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to work with Protestant and Catholic students.  Despite many difficulties, Dulaine has succeeded in overcoming deep animosities through the Dancing Classrooms regimen.

 

What is it about dance, including competitive dance forms, that builds social bonds?  Find out more in the next blogs.

What Makes a Good Team?

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movement pattern analysis teamLong before diversity became a political issue, Warren Lamb was encouraging diversity in management teams.  His model of diversity was not based on age, race, creed, or gender. Rather it was based on decision-making style.

Lamb found that the best teams are made up of people who have different decision-making strengths.   That is, you need someone on the team who is strongly motivated to Investigate, someone who Explores, someone who is quite Determined, someone high in Timing and so on.

There is just one problem.  When people approach decisions in very different ways, they are likely to get on each other’s nerves.  The Commitment-oriented individual wants to take action here and now.  The Attention-oriented person needs time to think things over and have a good look around.  Attenders can bother the Intention- oriented person who feels the first thing to be done to get to grips with the issues and resolve what needs to be done.  So there is a lot of potential for conflict in a diverse team.

And this is where the third value comes in – divergent decision makers need to learn to tolerate each other’s approaches and to appreciate what these very different motivations bring to the table.

So, in addition to Warren Lamb’s grounded theory, which brings meaning to patterns of movement, I would like to add three values that are equally important to the practice of Movement Pattern Analysis and particularly important at this moment: respecting individuality, fostering diversity, and encouraging tolerance.

Inside Meaning in Motion

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Capture“Meaning in Motion is one of the few, if not the only, contemporary texts to integrate historical, theoretical, and creative frameworks for understanding and studying Laban Movement Analysis,” writes Dr. Andrea Harris, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Dr. Harris has been using the text for several years now.  Her comment highlights key features of the book.  For example, Part 1 – History and Development of Laban Movement Analysis – discusses Laban’s career, the contributions of Irmgard Bartenieff and many others who have added to the Laban legacy.

Theory is covered with sections on Body, Effort, Space, Shape, and Movement Harmony.  Each of these sections incorporate Creative Explorations for use in the studio during class time or for individual study.

The book is richly illustrated with photographs, charts, and effort and space phrases.  Five different appendices provide additional material for study. These include bibliographies of various works by Laban, Bartenieff, and other major applications of Laban theory, along with more advanced space and effort sequences, and a section on relationship.  As Harris notes, “ I like that the polar triangles, girdles, axis, A and B scales are in the appendix, in case an instructor would want to incorporate them.”

She adds, “I have always wished for more information about Relationship (Appendix E).  I appreciate that you’ve fleshed out how the various Laban communities conceptualize relationship.”

In the next blog, learn how Dr. Nancy Beardall uses Meaning in Motion in two programs at Lesley University.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

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The wintery month of January is named after the Roman god Janus.  Janus had two faces, one that looked back and one that looked forward.  Similarly, this time of year invites introspection – reflection on things past and anticipation of things yet to be.  In honor of Janus, I look back and forward.

Movement study is not recognized as a discipline in its own right.  But someday it will be, thanks to the vision of remarkable people whose work and teachings have laid a foundation for the study of human movement.  One of these is Juana de Laban.

I met the formidable Dr. de Laban in 1972, when I transferred as an undergraduate to Southern Methodist University.  Dr. de Laban ran the graduate dance program and taught the undergraduate courses in dance history.  I had just encountered the work of Rudolf Laban at a dance festival the previous summer.  So, plucking up my courage, I approached Dr. de Laban after the first class and inquired if she were related to Rudolf Laban.  “I am his daughter,” she replied with great dignity.

Dr. de Laban was imposing, but not unapproachable.  By gradual increments we became friends.  She listened tolerantly to my wild ideas, hopes, and aspirations.  More importantly, she helped me and all her students see beyond our narrow notions of dance.

For example, in one of the first dance history classes, she showed films of trance dance.  I remember particularly the Holy Ghost people in the Appalachians, who pass into trance and handle rattlesnakes, as well as a Greek ritual that involved walking across hot coals.  These examples awakened me to the potential power of movement.

On another occasion, Dr. de Laban persuaded several graduate students to put together an informal concert of ethnic dance.  Philippine and Japanese dances were performed, along with an Australian aboriginal dance in which I participated.  This opened a window on the world beyond the departmental offerings, which were limited to Graham technique, ballet, and jazz.

Finally, Dr. de Laban demanded that her undergraduate history students be scholars as well as dancers.  Term paper topics were not to be chosen lightly, but vetted in conference with her in a shadowy, book-lined office.   Few of us undergraduates appreciated her stature as a dance and theatre scholar, for she led by quiet example. At the time, I certainly did not aspire to be a scholar.  But I see now that the term papers I wrote for Dr. de Laban planted a seed.  Retrospectively, I honor her.

Effort and Human Potential

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Since the discovery of neuroplasticity (the lifelong capacity of the human nervous system to regenerate and form new neural pathways), we aging Baby Boomers have been admonished to reinvent ourselves and learn new things, presumably so we will stay young forever.

This is, of course, hard advice to follow.  Not everyone wants to take up scuba diving or have a second career. Moreover, we are creatures of habit.  And one hallmark of skilled movement is that it has become, at least in part, automatic.

The common, everyday movements we make are the hardest to change.  We ascribe little significance to such habits until they are interrupted.  I speak from experience.  I postponed microsurgery for a herniated disk, not because I was afraid of the surgery, but because I dreaded the aftermath – six weeks of no bending, twisting, or lifting!

To prepare for these restrictions, I not only had to rearrange my home, I also had to rehearse moving in a different way.  Avoiding twisting and lifting didn’t seem so hard, but no bending?  How many times a day did I bend my back without even noticing?

Nevertheless, as Rudolf Laban explains, man “has the possibility and advantage of conscious training, which allows him to change and enrich his effort habits.”  This kind of change can almost be thought of as a meta-effort, or what Laban calls “humane effort.”  This is the effort applied to overcome habits and to develop more desirable qualities and inclinations.

Laban continues, “We are touched by the suggestion of quasi-humane efforts of devotion, sacrifice, or renunciation displayed by animals.  Such may or may not have a foundation in fact.  But we take it for granted that every man is able, and even almost under an obligation, to foster such kinds of effort.”

These quotes are taken from Laban’s book, The Mastery of Movement.  But he is not merely discussing the mastery of movement, he is also addressing the mastery of the self.   Or I should say “selves.”  For our humanity rests, not only on the reiteration of an embodied identity based on effort patterns, but also on our capacity to change movement habits through humane effort, and by so doing, change ourselves.

Effort and Assertion

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Every voluntary human movement involves applying energy to change the position of the body.  Energy can be applied in many different ways.  Rudolf Laban referred to these various qualities of kinetic energy as effort.  Similarly, the moving body can trace many different shapes as it traverses space.  Consequently, the human beings possess a richer range of motion than most other species.   As Laban observes, “When jumping the cat will be relaxed and flexible.  A horse or a deer will bound wonderfully in the air, but its body will be tense and concentrated during the jump.”   A human being, however, “can jump like a deer, and if he wishes, like a cat.”

Voluntary movement is intentional. Thus our bodies serve as an immediate means of acting on the environment to our satisfy needs.  We must make an effort to act.  However, according to Warren Lamb, “Effort goes with Shape organically…. The fact is we can never do Effort without Shaping and, if we emphasise the Shaping we still have to make an Effort.  The two are a duality, inseparable from each other, and fundamental to balance.”

Though fundamentally inseparable, it is possible for an individual to place more emphasis on effort than on shape, or vice versa.   This differential emphasis will characterize how the individual goes about acting in the world.

For example, Warren Lamb found that when a person emphasizes effort, he or she takes a more assertive approach.  Being assertive is commonly seen as being direct in claiming one’s rights, insistent, demanding and even aggressive.  In movement behavior terms, however, being assertive simply means applying one’s bodily energies to make things happen. The assertive person will believe that almost anything can be accomplished if he or she maintains focus and applies enough pressure at the right time.

This is the effect of an effort emphasis focused outwardly, on doing.  But effort also plays an important role in the inner life.  I take up this subject in my next blog.

Empty Space Does Not Exist

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According to Rudolf Laban, space is a superabundance of simultaneous movements. He’s right, of course. Empty space is full of air. And air is full of molecules and atoms, each a bundle of energy and particles that orbit and pulse.

Space isn’t empty for artists. It has shape. Artists learn to see this shape through drawing exercises. Rather than sketching the object, they draw the shape of the space around the object.

MoveScape CenterSpace isn’t empty for architects. Like a surgical suture, space connects a building with the other objects in the environment. Without empty space, an architectural design has no context. What isn’t there allows us to see what is there.

Space isn’t empty for dancers, either. As a young student at the American Dance Festival, I spent free time walking patterns in the Connecticut College gym. Sometimes I walked blindfolded. And over the course of the summer, I sensitized myself to space. I began to be able to tell where I was in the gym, how near or far from the wall. And when I took the blindfold off, space had texture and a faint bluish hue. It wasn’t empty anymore.

Space had structure and meaning for Rudolf Laban. And he devised some very clever ways for dancers and movers of all types to think about space, so that what once seemed empty comes alive.

In the forthcoming Tetra seminar, we will explore the structure of space to tap its expressive power. Click here to find out more.