On Irmgard Bartenieff

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In the summer of 1975, I left the Nikolai-Louis Studio, walked across Union Square to the Dance Notation Bureau, and declared I was interested in the Effort/Shape Program.

Irmgard Bartenieff

I was ushered in to see Irmgard Bartenieff, a delicate elderly German lady who had worked directly with Rudolf Laban. She was guiding spirit of the Effort/Shape program. I don’t remember exactly what we talked about, but Irmgard was open and encouraging. I became her student, then her assistant, and eventually a fellow faculty member.

After her death, when I left New York  and found myself on my own with no Laban colleagues handy, I really missed Irmgard. Then I began to appreciate fully the scope of her knowledge and the positive impact of who she was and her whole way of being in the world.

Consequently, I am delighted that Irmgard Bartenieff’s archives have a home now at the University of Maryland library. I am looking forward to the upcoming Symposium on November 10th, when those influenced by Bartenieff will share their reminiscences. This event, organized by archivist Susan L. Wiesner, launches an exhibit in the Performing Arts Library gallery that follows Irmgard’s path through her professional life. And what a career – dancer, Laban student, Labanotator, physical therapist, dance therapist, Effort/Shape guru, teach, author, and dance ethnographer. She was a living example of the many ways movement study can be applied. Thus the title of my Symposium talk – “Irmgard Bartenieff – Icon of Possibility.”

Choreutics in Berlin

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During a recent master class in Berlin, I introduced the “mixed seven-rings.” These Laban scales are analogous to the major diatonic scales in music. Participants were instructed to use the seven “signal points” of the scale as if they were musical notes and to compose a “spatial melody” in four measures. Choreutics in Berlin

Students could use the signal points in any order and make them any duration. Individuals could embody the specified directions in any way they chose. Yet, interestingly, when we watched these solos, the freely constructed spatial melodies retained the fundamental qualities that Laban highlights in his unpublished writings on the mixed seven-rings. That is, these choreutic forms combine arabesque-like shapes that penetrate space with attitude-like shapes that encompass space.

As one participant commented to me later, this creative assignment made space harmony relevant. Rather than “received wisdom,” that is, spatial sequences taught and repeated by rote, Choreutics came alive. It became a design source for dance!

Laban International

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I’ve just returned from teaching master classes in Berlin for Eurolab, the European Association for Laban Bartenieff Movement Studies. With advanced students from Germany, Czech Republic, Croatia, England, the U.S, and the Netherlands, it is exciting to see how Laban’s ideas are again spreading internationally. Laban International

Before the First World War, artistic innovations and new ideas circulated freely in Europe. Two world wars and the Cold War changed all that. When I first taught for Eurolab in the early 1990s, the Berlin Wall had just come down. The scar left by the Wall was still visible, and the city itself felt isolated.

Fast forward 25 years, and, thanks to the EU, inter-continental travel across borders is much easier. Moreover, a common European currency encourages people from different countries to gather around subjects of mutual interest.  This was very much the spirit in my classes in Berlin. Despite some language differences, we shared the language of movement – and that is very encouraging.

Creating a Language For Movement

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Around 1913, Rudolf Laban contemplated a career change from visual art to dance. But he recognized that unless a means could be found to record movement, dance was condemned to remain an ephemeral and consequently trivial art.

Creating-Language-Movement

 

In developing a language and symbol system for dance and movement, Laban thought visually. The theoretical models he developed are geometrical, not linguistic. This is both the beauty and the challenge of Laban Movement Analysis.

 

In recognizing that human movement is a psychophysical phenomenon, Laban saw that his language of movement had to capture two domains – the physical actions that unfold in the space of the outer environment and the movement of thought and feeling as these evolve in the inner world, coloring physical actions and making them expressive.

 

For analytic purposes, these two domains had to be separately conceived. Hence, Laban created two geometrical models – one for the outer world of visible movement in space (the kinesphere) and one for the inner world of thought and feeling (the dynamosphere).

 

And here is Laban’s genius.  Because inner and outer are always connected in volitional action, Laban’s two geometrical models can be related. The dynamosphere can be nested within the kinesphere.  

 

Find out more about the brilliance of Laban’s geometrical language of movement in the forthcoming course, Decoding Choreutics.

The Mysterious Mobius

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The mobius strip, also known as a lemniscate, is a unique shape having only one side and one edge.  The shape was invented almost simultaneously by two German mathematicians in 1858.  It became popular as a prop for magical parlor tricks in the late 19th century, and perhaps this is how Laban encountered it.

Mysterious-Mobius

 

You can make one yourself by twisting a strip of paper and joining the ends.  A normal band (think of a rubber band or a simple bracelet) has an inner surface and an outer surface and two edges.  But the mobius strip has only one surface and one edge. That is, if you start tracing a line on the outer surface, your pencil will move to the inner surface and return to the outer surface without ever lifting the pen.  Similarly, if you start running a finger along one edge and circuit the strip twice, you travel along both edges without interruption.

 

In other words, the outer becomes the inner and the inner becomes the outer.

 

Laban writes about lemniscates in Choreutics and even maps a couple in the kinesphere using direction symbols.  Does Laban mean for this to be taken literally, as a spatial trace-form?  Of is this a symbolic form?  Find out more in the forthcoming MoveScape Center course, “Decoding Choreutics.”

Living Fully in Three Dimensions

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As bipeds with mobile shoulder and hip joints, human beings have a wide range of motion available.  Yet physical challenges, such as the force of gravity and our heavy heads, limit the extent to which we actively tap fully three-dimensional movement. And mental habits can also limit our access to space.

 

Rudolf Laban succinctly identified two cognitive maps of space. The first is the dimensional cross and the cardinal directions of up and down, right and left, forward and backward. Laban relates these movement directions with stability.

Living-Fully-3-Dimensions

 

In contrast, Laban also identified four diagonal lines of motion. Think of these as radiating lines that connect the opposite corners of a cube or rectilinear room. Laban relates these sharply tilted lines with mobility.

 

Then Laban makes an interesting observation. Since most movements are neither completely stable or totally mobile, “the trace-forms of living matter” follow trajectories that lie between the dimensions and diagonals.

 

Laban went on to develop lengthy sequences of movement that follow these deflected pathways. These lines of motion, which are more subtle than normal cognitive maps of space, are mentally challenging.  Moreover, they physically test balance and range of motion.

 

Nevertheless, Laban’s choreutic models encourage living fully in three dimensions.  Find out more in the forthcoming MoveScape Center correspondence course.

Space: The Final Frontier

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Laban’s notions of space are the most difficult to understand and to embody for many movement analysis students.  Laban himself had to perform some mental gymnastics to capture the disappearing trace-forms of natural movement.  Fortunately, he left a guidebook – Choreutics (aka – The Language of Movement).

Space-Final-Frontier

 

Choreutics has always been my favorite book by Laban – but it is not an easy read.  Consequently, I developed an “old school” correspondence course in 2016 –“Decoding Rudolf Laban’s Masterpiece, Choreutics.” Back by popular demand, this course takes readers on a guided tour of this fascinating book.

 

Based on an easy schedule, participants will read the Preface, Introduction, and first 12 chapters of Choreutics.  A set of study questions will be provided for each reading assignment.  When each reading assignment has been completed, participants will receive a commentary that I have prepared, providing background context and elaborating on Laban’s themes.   

 

Think of this as a “great books” course designed to help movement specialists explore space with both body and mind.  Find out more….

Advancing Laban’s Ideas in the Movement Studio

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During the recent MoveScape Center workshop, “Expanding the Dynamosphere,” in New York City, we all had an “ah ha” moment about Laban’s effort theory. Here is how this insight unfolded.

Laban identified four effort drives. Of these, the Action Drive is the best known, for it deals with practical movements involved in working with tangible objects. The other three drives – Vision, Passion, and Spell – are called “transformation drives.” These are more subtle and complex effort combinations that have less to do with physical actions and more to do with mental activities such as thinking, feeling, and willing.

Advancing-Labans-Movement

For Laban, mental activities also involve moving. I’m sure he would agree with Mabel Ellsworth Todd, who wrote “For every thought supported by feeling, there is a muscle change.” Laban obviously characterized the combination of space, time, and flow factors as the outward embodiment of visionary states of mind – those mental acts of following a line of thought, steadily concentrating, soaring on the wings of imagination, catching a sudden insight, coming to a gradual realization, and so on.

Yet, when workshop participants were asked to identify associations with the various combinations of Vision Drive, they kept coming up with practical actions, like throwing darts and quenching fires. They reverted to physical actions that were not visionary in the least.  

This made us all realize that while we movement folk complain about the mind/body split, we tend to privilege the body over the mind. This sometimes leads us to think about effort in strictly physical terms.  

Laban was way ahead. He realized that movement is a psychophysical phenomenon. And he stuck to this view, finding effort in thinking, feeling, and willing as well as in acting.

Teaching Laban’s Effort Theory

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Laban’s theory of the dynamics of human movement (effort) is deceptively simple. There are only four motion factors (Weight, Time, Space, and Flow) and eight effort qualities. But the theory becomes much richer because different combinations and sequences of effort qualities express very different states of mind.  

Laban's-Effort-Theory

It is difficult to convey this richness in a semester-long course.  And I think that is okay. Students should not believe they have mastered all there is to know about  Laban in only a few weeks.  The key is to spark curiosity and a desire to continue to learn about movement expression.

Consequently, while Meaning in Motion is meant to be an introductory text, there is more material than can be covered in one semester.  For example, the chapter on Effort not only introduces the four motion factors and eight effort qualities.  It also covers all the states and drives, providing suggestions for creative explorations of these more complex dynamic expressions.

In explaining effort as expression, I discuss the psychological correlations that Laban drew with the motion factors and the basic phrasing pattern of preparation, exertion, and recuperation.  These notions are also linked to a reflective movement exploration.

Increasingly I have come to feel that it is important for students to understand relationships between states and drives – how states build to a drive or provide recuperation from a drive.  This is obviously more advanced material, but the adequate explanation is incorporated in the chapter on effort as well as in appendix material to help students begin to “think in terms of effort.”  

This was always Laban’s admonition.  Thinking in terms of effort requires a conceptual shift from focusing on what is done to appreciating how the movement is done.

Effort and Human Potential

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“We live only part of the life we are given,” writes Michael Murphy in The Future of the Body.  “Growing acquaintance with once-foreign cultures, new discoveries about our subliminal depths, and the dawning recognition that each social group reinforces just some human attributes while neglecting or suppressing others … suggests that we harbor a range of capacities that no single philosophy or psychology has fully embraced.”

effort-human-potential

Rudolf Laban would certainly agree.  “Preference for a few effort combinations only results in a lack of effort balance,” Laban notes.  “New dances and new ideas of behavior arise by a process of compensation in which a more or less conscious attempt is made to regain the use of lost or neglected effort patterns.”

If we live only a part of the life we are given, it is because we habitually use only a few effort combinations. To me, the great benefit of effort study is to experience, if only fleetingly, other ways of being in the world.

While I was first studying Laban Movement Analysis, I had a profound experience embodying an effort combination of the Spell Drive.  I momentarily became someone else and glimpsed an unfamiliar inner landscape.  This was not a part of the world that I normally inhabit.  Maybe I didn’t really want to live here.  But it was wonderful to discover a new realm of experience and to realize that I could consciously choose to enter this new world simply by moving in a certain way.

To me, the study of effort is the study of human potential, a chance to access a greater range of capacities that are not just physical in nature, but personal, psychological, and perhaps even spiritual.