Laban and I Discuss Trace-Forms

Posted on May 10, 2018 by Carol-Lynne Moore

CLM: I’ve read that Leonardo da Vinci was interested in “the second form of the human body” – that is, the lines traced by moving limbs on the space around the body. He visualized these forms as circles. Were you aware of that?

R. Laban: Not exactly. But again, circles have been used in figure drawing to help with capturing the figure in motion.

CLM: But your circles are “rhythmic.” What exactly does that mean?

RL: A circle lends itself to continuous motion. That’s why it is often used to symbolize eternity. I’m interested in analyzing the changing movement of the human body. I needed something that involved time, something that broke up the smooth and uniform motion of the circle. That’s a rhythmic circle.

CLM: A rhythmic circle is actually a polygon, isn’t it?

RL: Right. Polygons are still circles in the sense that they are closed forms. But a triangle accentuates three points in the circumference of a circle, a square, four points, and so on. Each accent means a rhythmic break and a slight change in direction.

CLM: You also related these polygonal rhythms of the moving body to “the ever-circling motions in the universe.” I’m not sure what this means.

RL: Geometry has metaphysical aspects. But more practically, I had to relate the rhythmic circles traced by the body to the space around the body. I called that space the kinesphere. It’s our personal universe, the only universe in which we really are the center of all the action.

CLM: So are you saying that the body is at the center of all we do?

RL: There is no action without movement. But the body isn’t the only thing that moves. Thoughts and feelings move as well. Movement is the action of both body and mind!

The Labanarium – A Global Community

Posted on April 12, 2018 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Guest blog by Juliet Chambers-Coe.

In A Life for Dance, Laban recounts how he set about developing an artistic community of shared practice and ideals:

“To participate creatively in this great community idea and in the festive spirit which should be the goal and supreme aspiration of every culture…the daily building up of the communal culture which should culminate in festivities and celebrations and be intimately bound up with the development of the self…I asked all those who were sympathetic with my views to come and help realize this dreamed of way of life somewhere in the open country” (Laban, 1975).

Whilst many of us do not have the luxury of time, space and resources for developing such a community in the ‘open country’, the post-modern era in which we now live has provided us with other ways of coming together and for more of us connect worldwide across geographic, institutional and cultural borders.

The Labanarium offers such a community space, where members can develop the self within a supportive like-minded community of movement and dance practitioners and scholars.

The Labanarium is an international resource and network center for the movement community encompassing movement practices of any discipline. In the spirit of Rudolf Laban, the Labanarium seeks to foster an openness to the breadth and diversity of approaches to the practice and study of human movement as a psychophysical phenomenon.

Founded in January 2017, the Labanarium is now one year old. In the past twelve months, we have seen members of the Labanarium community create performances, research events, create and attend workshops, record podcasts, ask questions and connect through movement, on the network and via the mailing list.

Membership is free of charge with only one requirement – an interest in human movement and an openness to the breadth and diversity of approaches that seek to explore it.

So why not join us and check out what is going on in your community, you are very welcome… www.labanarium.com

Beyond Motus Humanus

Posted on April 10, 2018 by Carol-Lynne Moore

In 1991, Kaoru Yamamoto, Charlotte Honda and I founded Motus Humanus – a professional organization dedicated to supporting the development of Laban-based movement study.

Over the next 25 years, Motus Humanus provided networking opportunities and continuing education for movement analysts, supported research and publication, honored professional achievement, and created a community for Laban-based movement specialists.

Now Juliet Chambers-Coe has created the Labanarium – a 21st century vehicle for the movement community. New technology opens up exciting avenues of communication and new possibilities for interaction and collaboration.

Find out more in the next guest blogs!

Esperanto and the Pan-human Language of Movement

Posted on April 5, 2018 by Carol-Lynne Moore

With two million speakers worldwide, Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed (rather than naturally evolving) language. Created by a Polish doctor in the late 1800s, Esperanto was meant to be an international language “to unite nations in common brotherhood.”

Movement is often characterized as a pan-human means of communication, a kind of international language that, like Esperanto, can foster mutual understanding among different peoples. In his more utopian musings, Laban subscribed to this idea – with a slight variation.

Rather than movement itself, Laban’s idea was to create a movement-based symbol system that could be universally understood. In Choreutics he writes, “It is, perhaps, a fantastic idea that there could be ideographic signs in a notation through which all people of the world would communicate.”

Laban didn’t achieve this dream. Nevertheless, his deep understanding of human movement as a psycho-physical phenomenon and the three systems he created for describing, analyzing, and recording movement – space harmony (choreutics), Labanotation/Kinetography, and effort notation – have been helping people around the world understand this ephemeral and omnipresent aspect of human life.

The “Labanese” are a transnational sodality. And now, thanks to post-modern media and technology, we can be in touch with one another to a greater extent than ever before. Find out more in the next blog!

Dancing Across Borders

Posted on April 3, 2018 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Once upon a time, dance was a local phenomenon. Because dance was rooted in the community, Rudolf Laban hypothesized that “an observer of tribal and national dances can gain information about the states of mind or traits of character cherished and desired within the particular community.” This is because “these dances show the effort range cultivated by social groups living in a definite milieu.”

Globalization is changing this. Popular dance forms in particular move across borders with remarkable speed. Tango, salsa, competitive ballroom dance, and hip-hop – to name just a few – are now performed around the world, often by social groups different in class, race, and temperament from the milieu in which the dance originated.

Nowadays, dancers form transnational sodalities. Sodalities are non-kin groups organized for a specific purpose. This has led Jonathan Marion to argue that competitive ballroom dancers, for example, are quite literally – “a ‘tribe’ of dancers with a collective identity, the shared experience of a translocal ballroom culture of practice and competition, which exists side-by-side with members’ own national culture.”

Culture, of course, is deeply embedded in bodily practices absorbed from birth and often buried below conscious awareness. Dance is a conscious bodily practice, however. It must be learned. Learning dances that originated elsewhere expands not only movement repertoire but movement identity.

In a world where many would strengthen the divisions between nations and peoples, let’s keep dancing!

Mastery of Movement, Mastery of Self

Posted on March 22, 2018 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Michael Murphy theorizes that “flesh and consciousness tend to coevolve” through the practice of movement and somatic disciplines. Thus virtuosity – effort economy or the technical perfection of “effortless-ness” – may indeed have a higher function.

“Cutting Up an Ox,” by the Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu, mirrors this idea.

In this parable, a Chinese prince observes the virtuosity of his cook butchering an ox. The cleaver “murmured like a gentle wind” and the ox “fell apart with a whisper.” The prince exclaims, “Your method is faultless.” But butcher explains otherwise:

“When I first began to cut up oxen, I would see before me the whole ox, all in one mass. After three years, I no longer saw this mass. I saw the distinctions.”

“But now, I see nothing with the eye. My whole being apprehends… my cleaver finds its own way.”

“There are spaces in the joints; the blade is thin and keen: When this thinness finds that space…it goes like a breeze.”

“Then I stand still and let the joy of the work sink in.”

“This is it!” the prince exclaims. “My cook has shown me how I ought to live my own life!”

The Future of the Body

Posted on March 20, 2018 by Carol-Lynne Moore

The physical capabilities of human beings are increasing, and this was quite evident at the Winter Olympics. For example, snowboarders were doing feats in the qualifying runs that would have won medals at previous Olympics. Michael Murphy, co-founder of the Esalen Institute, has been fascinated by the expanding horizon of human potential represented by such exceptional athletes.

In The Future of the Body, Murphy claims that “no culture has ever possessed as much publicly available knowledge as we do today regarding the transformation capacities of human nature.” He argues that “by gathering data from many fields – including medical science, anthropology, sports, and the arts, psychical research, and comparative religious studies – we can identify extraordinary versions of most, if not all, of our basic attributes, among them sensorimotor, kinesthetic, communication, and cognitive abilities; sensations of pain and pleasure; love; vitality; volition; sense of self, and various bodily processes.”

For Murphy, the challenges athletes embrace, the technical knowledge used to achieve high-level performance, and the pain and sacrifice these players accept “demonstrate our human capacity and drive to achieve new levels and kinds of functioning.” Moreover, athletes often experience “altered states and ecstatic moments bordering on the mystical.” Consequently “the fact that spiritual moods occur spontaneously in many athletes indicates that disciplines for the body sometimes catalyze depths of the mind.”

Does physical virtuosity point towards something deeper? Find out more in the next blog.

Grace in Sports

Posted on March 15, 2018 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Grace has been characterized as the art of moving well through life. In her ruminations on grace, dance critic Sarah Kaufmann, notes that “the graceful person is an image of our ideal selves, the embodiment of the dream we have of existing easily in the world.”

As her discussion proceeds, her observations begin to link with Laban’s characterization of virtuosity as effort economy. According to Kaufmann, graceful actions “offer an image of that desirable state of affairs: effortless mastery. Mastery of the situation and of our own bodies, behavior, and emotions.”

Kaufmann adds, “For me, the most graceful athletes evoke a means of escape… We watch them for their inexpressible beauty, and the hope they’ll soar and take us with them.”

The Magic of Play

Posted on March 13, 2018 by Carol-Lynne Moore

As I reflect on the seductive appeal of Olympic sports, I’m drawn to the notion that sport is play. It may be a livelihood and an obsession for the athletes themselves, but for spectators, a sport is still a game. But what makes an activity playful?

In his seminal book, Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga identifies key features of play as the following:

* All play is a voluntary activity; it is free; it is never imposed as a duty or a practical task.

* Play is not ordinary or real life – it is a “stepping out of ‘real’ life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all its own.”

* Play is distinct from ordinary life in location and duration – it is played out “within certain limits of time and place.”

* Play creates order – “into an imperfect world and into the confusion of life it brings a temporary but limited perfection.”

* Playing creates community – “a feeling of being ‘apart together’ in an exceptional situation, of sharing something important.” Consequently, play “retains its magic beyond the duration of the individual game.”

Finally, play has a tendency to be beautiful. More about beauty and grace in the next blog.

Sweet Spots in Time

Posted on March 8, 2018 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Explaining exceptional athletic performance occupies not only coaches but inquiring spectators. The “Sweet Spot Theory” propounded by sports writer John Jerome provides some interesting insights.

To introduce his theory, Jerome uses the example of throwing rocks as a kid. He spent many hours by a river, tossing rocks at discarded bottles. He’d warm up his throwing arm by just lobbing rocks, noting that “there is a peculiar appeal in such rhythmic, repetitive activity.” But mostly he recalls “the haunting power I felt on that occasional throw when I knew as the stone left my hand it was going to hit its target.”

This is Jerome’s notion of the “sweet spot in time” – a moment when what his mind intended was matched by what his body accomplished. He calls this “a momentary healing of the mind-body split.” Superior athletes seem to be able to find these sweet spots regularly – how they do so is part of the magic that makes sports appealing to those who merely watch.