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!

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.

Seductive Virtuosity: The Winter Olympics

Posted on March 6, 2018 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Although I’m not a big sports fan, I must confess that I am completely seduced by the virtuosity of the Olympic athletes. The dangerous things they do so well are truly mesmerizing.

The danger is part of the appeal. Ice, snow, and steep slopes make perilous surfaces for even normal locomotion. What amazes me, however, is the extent to which the skiers, snowboarders, and skaters are increasingly airborne – turning, twisting, somersaulting – and somehow returning to earth intact and sliding on to the next fantastic trick.

Laban’s comments on virtuosity in Mastery of Movement are interesting in this context. Virtuosos, like highly skilled laborers, show an economy of effort “that makes the movement look almost effortless. Expressive details remain almost accidental … because the whole effort is concentrated on the actions necessary” to the task.

The commentators like to emphasize the athletes’ dedication and struggles to overcome obstacles, and this certainly adds a background of drama to the competition. However, the Olympics are riveting primarily because of the technical perfection of the athletes’ physical performances. From Laban’s perspective, such movement virtuosity functions as escapist entertainment, allowing spectators to “find comfort and relief” from “workaday sorrows.”

Are these spectacles of perfection merely escapist entertainment? Find out more in the next blogs.

Laban and War

Posted on February 8, 2018 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Rudolf Laban’s father was a general in the Austro-Hungarian Army. As Laban writes in his autobiography, “My father taught me the life of a soldier, which fascinated me almost as much as did the arts.” Subsequent events show that the life of the artist won. Nevertheless, Laban drew on his military background when it came to theorizing dance and movement.

As Gwynne Dyer asserts, for almost all human history, a battle “has been an event as stylized and limited in its movement as a classical ballet, and for the same reasons: the inherent capabilities and limitations of the human body.” Laban concurs, drawing parallels in Choreutics between the cardinal dimensions, the five positions of ballet, and protection of the vulnerable areas of the human body as mirrored in the opening movements of fencing.

The metaphor of battle also plays a role in Laban’s conceptualization of human effort. In Laban’s dynamic framework, each of the four motion factor manifests as one or the other of two contrasting effort qualities. Four of these effort qualities indicate the mover’s indulging attitude towards Weigh, Time, Space or Flow; the other four effort qualities reveal fighting attitudes, in which the mover appears to be struggling against Weight, Time, Space, or Flow.

In Mastery of Movement, Laban applies these metaphors to develop a continuum of personality types, noting that “The fighting against or indulging attitude towards a motion factor form the basic aspects of the psychological attitudes of hatred and love. So it is useful if the artist realizes how these two poles of emotion are related to other forms of inner attitude, and how their relationship is mirrored in the movements of different characters.”

Find out more about Laban’s movement metaphors in the upcoming MoveScape Center correspondence course, “Mastering Laban’s Mastery of Movement.”

Laban and Work Movement

Posted on February 6, 2018 by Carol-Lynne Moore

The ground-breaking efficiency studies done by Rudolf Laban and F.C. Lawrence in British industry are well-known. The critical role these observations of work movement played in the development of Laban’s effort theory is far less understood. But a careful reading of Mastery of Movement, Laban’s most complete explication of effort, reveals this to be the case.

In 1947, Effort, jointly written by Laban and Lawrence, chronicled their discoveries studying work movement. Effort deals exclusively with the Action Drive – combinations of the motion factors of Weight, Time, and Space. These combined factors yield “Eight Basic Actions” – Floating, Punching, Gliding, Slashing, Dabbing, Wringing, Flicking, and Pressing. Laban introduces the fourth motion factor, Flow, in his discussions of work actions and psychological dimensions of effort. But these discussions are suggestive at best.

Now in its 4th edition, Mastery of Movement was first published in 1950 under the title, The Mastery of Movement on the Stage. Laban takes effort theory beyond the workplace in this book. Nevertheless, the effort components of Weight, Time, and Space provide a foundation for his discussion of the stage as “the mirror of man’s physical, mental, and spiritual existence.” Laban begins his explication of effort with the Eight Basic Actions, but develops this into a full theorizing of “incomplete efforts” (a.k.a. effort states or combinations of only two motion factors) and the “transformation drives” (the Vision, Passion, and Spell Drives, in which Flow replaces one of the other motion factors).

For Laban, Flow seems to transform functional actions into various expressive moods that carry the mover up the Hierarchy of Needs – from tangible aims that sustain individual existence towards intangible values that transcend mere survival.

How does Laban apply these ideas for the stage performer? Find out in “Mastering Laban’s Mastery of Movement” – starting in early March.

Movement and Human Needs

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Carol-Lynne Moore

“Man moves in order to satisfy a need,” Rudolf Laban writes in the Introduction to Mastery of Movement. “It is easy to perceive the aim of a person’s movement if it is directed to some tangible object. Yet there also exist intangible values that inspire movement.”

Laban returns to the theme of tangible and intangible motivations several times in Mastery. In many ways, his notions of the motives that spur human movement echo Abraham Maslow’s theory of a Hierarchy of Needs. Put simply, Maslow’s model differentiates human needs based on sustaining personal existence from those aimed at transcending personal existence; that is, his hierarchy divides the tangible from the intangible motivators.

In Beyond Words, we drew upon Maslow’s ideas as a way to survey different roles of movement in human life. Lying along a continuum from the functional to the expressive, we identified four key areas: movement in work (the productive function), movement in war and sports (the protective function), movement in a social display (the communicative/affiliative function), and movement in worship (the transcendental function).

In interesting ways, Laban’s own theories and studies of movement touch upon all four areas. Find out more in the next series of blogs.

Unlocking Laban’s Legacy

Posted on January 18, 2018 by Carol-Lynne Moore

I began my blogs this year by looking back. Now I want to look forward – to how the past accomplishments of pioneers of movement study can enrich present and future generations.

Rudolf Laban’s assertion that human movement has a harmonic structure analogous to musical harmony is one idea I would like to see taken seriously enough to be tested. While I have presented Laban’s notions in detail in The Harmonic Structure of Movement, Music, and Dance, this is not enough.

Consequently, I am launching the Advanced Movement Harmony project later this year. With measured steps, I intend to present the Choreutic and Eukinetic sequences identified by Laban in comprehensible forms that can be embodied. Many of these effort and space sequences have been published, by Laban and by others. But these representations are scattered, and in some cases, very difficult to understand, let alone embody.

So stay tuned. More about this project as the year unfolds!

Exciting Times in the Laban Archive

Posted on January 16, 2018 by Carol-Lynne Moore

For most dance and movement people, glistening with sweat and reveling in the joys of embodiment, research in a dusty archive must sound like one of the dullest pastimes ever. Few things are as exhilarating as dancing, but discovering things in an archive can also be exciting. I ought to know.

I spent seven years (with time out for good behavior!) doing research in the Rudolf Laban Archive at the National Resource Centre for Dance in England. I was perusing Laban’s unpublished writings and drawings. During this time, I learned how Laban worked as a theorist. I glimpsed how he was developing and extending his thinking about human movement. And I began to see how these new ideas could be brought to life in the movement studio.

In these ways, the past has animated my present and future. I’m dedicated, not just to replicating Laban as we know him, but to pushing the envelope and seeing how his ideas can be tested and extended.

I’m doing this by encouraging close reading of Laban’s masterworks – Choreutics and The Mastery of Movement. I’ll be offering two correspondence courses this year – the first on Mastery of Movement; the second on Part 2 of Choreutics (which really does have to be decoded!). Find out more.

More Archival Traces of Bartenieff

Posted on January 11, 2018 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Irmgard Bartenieff’s letters to Rudolf Laban, as I mentioned in the previous blog, also reveal how she adapted to American culture and redefined herself as a professional – moving beyond dance into physical therapy, dance therapy, and dance anthropology.

In a letter to Laban dated July 21, 1944, Irmgard wrote:

“I went into my work with the sick abnormal body with this curiosity, and I discovered, while always working with the sick as well as with the average untrained working person, how deeply buried the joy and understanding of movement is in most people – to a degree that we really cannot be astonished about the small audiences dancers get.”

Later, in her letter to Laban dated October 12, 1947, Bartenieff added:

“As you probably remember, this ‘insulated’ business of what we used to call ‘Kunsttanz’ [art dance] has never fully given satisfaction to me – I am much rather an artisan with good tools and alert senses to perfect and understand movement in its many manifestations and work with many different people. And for that here in America is ample opportunity.”

The Laban community is very fortunate that so many archival traces are still available for study. There is still much to be learned from the pioneers of our field. Find out more in the next blog.