Diagonal Corridors of Action

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For many years, I have been puzzled by Laban’s emphasis on the cubic diagonals.  He has embedded these oblique internal lines, which connect opposite corners of the cube, in his theories of both space and effort.

Spatially, diagonals represent the most mobilizing lines of motion, the slanted trajectories that lead to flying and falling. In addition, the cubic diagonals serve as axes for all the most familiar Choreutic sequences:  the Primary and A and B Scales.  The girdle, the axis scales, the polar triangles, and transverse 3-rings are all situated alongside or around these oblique lines, forming a variety of movement shapes encompassing an empty corridor of action.

Effort sequences also evolve around the diagonals.  In Choreutics, Laban maps various effort patterns on the cube:  the Standard Scale of the dynamosphere, a knot, a twisted circle, and a lemniscate (see Choreutics, Figures 20, 35, 36, and 38).

Like his Choreutic sequences, these Eukinetic patterns are portrayed as unfolding alongside or around a cubic diagonal.  Although he represents these dynamic phrases on a 3-D model, Laban writes that effort sequences “never have a precise place in three-dimensional space.  They work, as we know, within the movement visible in three dimensions, and are symbolised by diagonals around which they evolve like fluid shadows.”

In this sense, Laban’s use of the diagonal as an axis seems to be analogous to the hub of a wheel.  As the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu observes, “We join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that makes the wagon move.”  Thus the cubic diagonals provide the center for Laban’s models of spatial and kinetic sequences.  They are the “whole” that makes the person move.

Making Choreutics Personal

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Bringing choreutics to life means finding a way to make it personally meaningful.  This is the key to being able to teach this part of Laban’s work in a lively way.

The forthcoming Octa workshop aims to support personal understanding and good teaching practice.  So there will be homework assignments that ask participants to bring their own imaginative forces to bear on moving and teaching choreutic forms.

For example, consider the Primary (aka Standard) Scales.  There are four of these 12-rings.  These lengthy scales meander across the surface of the kinesphere, passing through each of the four corners of the vertical, horizontal, and sagittal planes and returning to their starting point.

Whew – it’s hard to even describe these spatial sequences in words!  It is even more challenging to remember and perform these sinuous sequences, for their twists and turns can feel counter-intuitive….

But there are ways to bring body and mind together.  Here are a few suggestions.  The Primary Scales can be subdivided into phrases linking three or four signal points.  These shorter phrases have respectively the shape of a C or an S.  Musical accompaniment in either 3/4  or 4/4 time can help the mover phrase these trace-forms.  Careful choice of the planar starting point can give the scale a certain character.

For example, I have found that I like linking three signal points and starting and ending each phrase of the scale in the sagittal plane.  If I’m leading with the right arm, this neatly partitions the scale into two halves, the first transiting through the right hemisphere of the kinesphere, and the second through the left hemisphere.

This approach works fine for me with two of the four Primary Scales.  For the other two, I’ve had to develop a mnemonic verse to remember where I go and why.

Join me in finding new ways to bring choreutics to life in the upcoming Octa workshop July 19-21, in Golden, Colorado.

Choreutics – The Whole Enchilada

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Like many movement analysts, I’ve always thought that choreutics was synonymous with space harmony.  But now I see that choreutics is not just about space.  For Laban, choreutics is the whole enchilada.  It is body, effort, shape, and space – movement as an integration of the physical, psychological, and spiritual.

I will be incorporating this new perspective in the forthcoming Octa workshop, Bringing Choreutics to Life.  The focus will still be on space, but with the aim of using body, effort, and shape to experience more fully the patterned trace-forms that Laban identified as a beneficial physical practice.

Close examination reveals that Laban had two aims in writing Choreutics.  The first was to present his descriptive framework of human movement, which he conceived to be a physical and psychological phenomenon.  Consequently, Laban’s framework has two domains:  the kinesphere and the dynamosphere.  The kinesphere encompasses visible motion through space, conceived as “trace-forms.”  The dynamosphere contains the thoughts and feelings that give rise to physical actions, conceived as effortful “shadow-forms.”

While these two distinctly different aspects of movement must be separated for analytical purposes, Laban swears that “in reality they are entirely inseparable from each other.”  And this gives rise to his second aim, to postulate a harmonic structure in human movement, a means by which things that are different in fundamental nature (such as effort and space) are brought into agreement.

In other words, Choreutics is about differentiation and integration.  It is about how body, effort, shape, and space cohere in meaningful human actions.  It is meant to be a physical practice, but one with deeper significance.  Find out more in the forthcoming Octa workshop, Bringing Choreutics to Life.

Bringing Choreutics to Life

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In his theoretical masterpiece Choreutics, Rudolf Laban writes that  “getting the ‘feel’ of a movement gives real understanding of it.”  Thus the upcoming Octa workshop, Bringing Choreutics to Life, is all about understanding movement by moving.

Laban’s notions of space, time, and energy are quite abstract.  The complex geometrical models he developed to represent these ideas are hard to grasp.  But Laban’s movement theories can always be linked to concrete movement.  His ideas can be embodied.

Bringing choreutic forms to life requires imagination.  As Laban advises, “it is useful from many points of view to omit entirely all precise instructions as to bodily execution and dynamic intentions, for it will be both advantageous and instructive for the performer to experiment and find for himself the most harmonious way of executing simple forms.”

Typically, choreutic forms have been taught through imitation.  That is, the instructor demonstrates and the student follows.  Several of the Tetra seminar students confessed, however, that they had never really been able to memorize the spatial sequences.  In some way, they were never able to make the forms their own.

I love the choreutic material, and I love teaching it.   I’ve had to use my imagination, not only to bring it to life for myself, but also to help students really get the feel of these forms at the body level.  This, and more, are what I will be sharing in the upcoming Octa workshop.

Choreutics – Decoded!

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Adventurous readers on four continents have now completed my six-week correspondence course, “Decoding Rudolf Laban’s Masterpiece, Choreutics.” As Laban remarks in the final chapter, exhaustive exploration of the “immense domain of space and movement” will demand “the collaboration of generations still to come.”

I guess that means us.

For myself, the next step is demonstrating how to take Choreutic theory into practice in the forthcoming Octa workshop, Bringing Choreutics to Life.

To my fellow Choreutics decoders, I posed the following questions:

Of the many ideas presented in Choreutics, what has stimulated your imagination?  What might you want to pursue in more depth?

The following answers reflect the diversity of topics presented in Laban’s masterpiece, Choreutics, and the many aspects of movement still open for more exhaustive exploration:

“I would like to delve into specific scales, especially the Primary Scale.”

“I am keen to play more with the law of proximity; I’m fascinated by knots, twisted circles, and lemniscates.”

“I am interested in the relationship between space and mood.”

“Lemniscates!  How do we move them?”

“I’m interested in movement as the integration of body and mind.”

“I am interested in supporting my clients in developing their sense of embodiment.”

“In the same way that Laban felt Choreutics could become a way of communicating across cultures, I believe it could be a way of communicating across disciplines….”

“I’m interested in a deeper, experiential understanding of ‘harmony.’”

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….

 

The Octa Is Coming

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In July, the Octa workshop, “Bringing Choreutics to Life” takes Laban’s space harmony theory into practice. This three-day workshop presents key Choreutic concepts in a way that is accessible for participants new to Laban’s ideas as well as experienced movement analysts.

Laban himself admitted that “our mental functions employ geometrical symbols to express orientation in space, but generally our feeling does not comprehend living movement within geometrical plasticity.” In other words, both understanding and embodying choreutics can be steep learning curve!

 

I ought to know. I’ve been teaching choreutics for over 30 years. While I love the material, I am keenly aware that many students struggle.   In the Octa, I plan to demonstate a variety of ways to present Choreutics and to make it lively and meaningful.

 

Find out more….

The Tetra Takes Off

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Twenty-one brave readers on four continents began the Tetra seminar, Decoding Laban’s Choreutics on March 26th. This “great books” correspondence course is focused on Laban’s posthumously published masterpiece, also known as The Language of Movement.

The Tetra Takes Off via Movescape Center

Over a six-week period, we are exploring the book two chapters at a time. I use the word “exploring” purposefully, for I see this course as a journey of discovery for all twenty-two of us.

It is certainly proving to be a journey of discovery for me. As the guide, I have two tasks. First, I assign questions to provide a focus for each reading assignment. Secondly, I write a commentary on the assigned reading. These commentaries provide background information to help illuminate Laban’s thinking, link themes that recur across chapters, and, in some cases, clarify what Laban appears to be saying.

I have always found some parts of the book to be mystifying. I don’t expect to be able to dispel all the mysteries. However, I am finding that some confusion is due to errors, particularly in the illustrations and notations that accompany them. Perhaps someday an edition of this significant theoretical work can be published with an errata sheet!

For the moment, it is enough to have thoughtful companions and interesting exchange of views as the Tetra takes off.

Oscillations and Deflections

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Untitled design (8)In his masterwork, Choreutics, Laban notes that “oscillations are the means of expression in the two arts, music and dance.”  We found evidence supporting Laban’s observation in the Prototypes project.

Of course, Laban has constructed his prototypic sequences as oscillations, shifting between opposite directions in space.  The simplest pattern, the Dimensional Scale, oscillates between the cardinal directions. So the dancer reaches up, then down; opens the arm sideward, then reaches across the body; finally extends backward, then forward.

For Laban, however, there is more than one way to move up or down, or forward or backward.  For the basic directions “follow one another with infinite variations, deflections, and deviations.”  Thus upward movement can also veer forwards, or to the side, or backwards and across.

We found corroboration of Laban’s two observations in one of the improvisations recorded for the Prototypes project.  The dancers were asked to play with the concept of stability and mobility.  Marina Walchi’s spontaneous creation on this theme revealed an interesting pattern of oscillation.  If she moved up, this was followed by a movement down.  If across, by an opening action, and so on.  The oscillation might occur after a sequence of directional changes, such as down-open-across, across-up, across-down.  Nevertheless, an underlying vibratory pattern appeared.

In addition, the directional changes were not merely dimensional. Rather the shifting pattern was often deflected toward corners of the vertical, horizontal and sagittal planes or towards the diagonals.

Though only a single case, this example is intriguing.  So here is a simple challenge – while talking with a friend, watch his/her hand gestures.  Can you detect a pattern of directional reversal?  Of deflections from the cardinal directions?  Is it possible, as Laban asserted,that “between the harmonic components of music and dance there is not only an outward resemblance, but a structural congruity, which although hidden at first, can be investigated and verified, point by point?”