The Tetra Takes Off

Posted on May 3, 2016 by Carol-Lynne Moore

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

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.

Decoding Choreutics – Key #1

Posted on March 8, 2016 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Another example of Laban’s double vision is his concept of the kinesphere and dynamosphere as dual domains of human movement. To represent both domains, Laban utilizes the cube.

Decoding Choreutics via Movescape

With regard to the kinesphere, Laban uses the cube quite literally. Its corners, edges, and internal diagonals serve as a kind of longitude and latitude for mapping movement in the space around the dancer’s body.

With regard to the dynamosphere, Laban uses the cube formally to represent patterns of effort change. This shift in how the model should be interpreted is complicated further by Laban’s use of direction symbols to stand for effort qualities and combinations.

When Laban wrote Choreutics in 1938-39, the effort symbols had not yet been created. Consequently, his dual use of direction symbols to stand in for effort obscures the discussion, but not entirely.

To decode the models discussed in Chapters 3, 6, and 9, it is only necessary to translate the direction symbols into effort qualities and combinations. Once this is done, Laban’s discussion of dynamospheric patterns becomes clear.

Want more keys? Register for the correspondence course, “Decoding Laban’s Choreutics,” beginning March 26.

“God Geometricizes….” Said Madame Blavatsky

Posted on March 3, 2016 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Artistic and scientific circles were not the only circles that overlapped in the fin de siècle period. European artists of the period were also involved in various secret spiritual societies that flourished in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

For example, the painter Wassily Kandinsky was an ardent follower of Theosophy, one of the occult spiritual movements of the period, and one that was very attractive to artists. As religious historian Mircea Eliade notes, avant garde European artists “utilized the occult as a powerful weapon in their rebellion against the bourgeois establishment and its ideology.”

Novel spiritual practices were not merely a form of rebellion for the European avant garde. The occult revival also gave artists new ways to think about the nature of art as it moved beyond representation and symbolism toward formalism and abstraction. Kandinsky drew upon precepts of Theosophy, such as the quote above by Theosophy guru, Madame Blavatsky, to theorize a spiritual visual art composed of only form and color. By these means alone, Kandinsky wrote, the artist could “cause vibrations in the soul.”

Laban was also attracted to the occult. During his career as a painter (1899- 1919), he supposedly associated with three esoteric groups: the Free Masons, the Ordo Templi Orientis, and the Rosicrucians. The extent of Laban’s involvement is a matter of speculation. Nevertheless, in Choreutics, his treatise on the geometry of human movement, Laban does acknowledge that his subject “necessitates a certain spiritual emphasis.”

What does this mean? Find out more in the correspondence course, “Decoding Choreutics,” beginning March 26.

Effort and Inner Life

Posted on October 13, 2015 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Effort is not only about doing; it is also about being, or what Rudolf Laban calls movement thinking. “Movement thinking could be considered as a gathering of impressions of happenings in one’s own mind, for which nomenclature is lacking. This thinking does not serve orientation in the external world but rather it perfects man’s orientation in his inner world.”

Laban relates movement thinking to effort in the following way: “Man’s desire to orientate himself in the maze of his drives results in definite effort rhythms.” Laban goes on to describe these drives in effort terms. The way he conceives it, there are four effort drives: the Action Drive, the Passion Drive, the Vision Drive, and the Spell Drive. Laban’s mapping of effort rhythms makes it possible to explore this world and its inner landscapes by moving mindfully. I had one such adventure during my training to be a movement analyst.

I chose a phrase with the Spell Drive configuration in it. The Spell Drive combines effort qualities of space (direct or indirect), weight (strong or light), and flow (bound or free). Spell is the timeless drive, hypnotic and mesmerizing. As I note in Meaning in Motion, “When our sensation of the passing of time disappears, we usually find the experience to be slightly unreal, even uncanny.” And that is indeed what happened to me.

I struggled to embody an effort rhythm combining strong, bound, and indirect qualities. When I finally succeeded, I was transformed into a Grendl-like creature. It was a very real experience. It shook me up, and started me on a long journey to understand the psychological ramifications of effort.

We use effort to assert our will over things in the outer world, but the effort choices we make also influence our inner worlds.

On Barbie, Laban, and Movement Imagination

Posted on January 22, 2015 by Carol-Lynne Moore

In last month’s lecture-demonstration, “10 Ways to Bring Laban Theory to Life,” Cate Deicher and I stressed the importance of movement imagination. Laban’s notions of effort and space are pretty abstract, and we feel movement analysts must bring their own imaginative forces to bear when teaching, lest Laban’s ideas seem cut and dried. Which they most certainly are not!

To illustrate this point, I compared Barbie to a Waldorf school doll. Barbie is made of molded plastic, with well-defined features and realistic, somewhat idealized anatomy. Her hands have fingers and her arched feet have toes. In other words, Barbie leaves little to the imagination.

The types of dolls used in Waldorf schools, on the other hand, are very simple. These stuffed dolls are made of cloth. The feet and hands are simply rounded shapes, and the face may only have eyes, with no other features indicated. The dolls are abstract by design so that the child must bring the doll to life and give it definition by exercising his or her imagination.

In many movement arts, the mode of embodiment is carefully prescribed. Which body parts are to be used, where they go in space, how long it takes them to get there, and how the movement is to be phrased rhythmically and dynamically – all these features are clearly stipulated. Like a Barbie doll, little is left to the imagination.

In Laban’s Choreutic scales and Eukinetic phrases, the mode of embodiment is seldom prescribed. The mover has latitude in choosing the bodily coordination, timing, rhythm, and phrasing. Like a Waldorf doll, Laban’s abstract kinetic ideas require the mover to exercise imagination.

Laban had a reputation for sketching his ideas and leaving the details to be worked out by colleagues. However, he was completely capable of working out the specifics of embodiment – I’ve found instances when he did so among his archival papers. Therefore, I believe he left the details of embodiment vague on purpose.

So many movement arts are taught “monkey see, monkey do” – students learn by imitating the instructor as precisely as possible. Imitation will only get you so far with Laban. His ideas demand more, and by so doing, awaken inner forces that otherwise would slumber.

Evoking Effort with Balloons

Posted on January 19, 2015 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Everyday objects can be employed creatively to evoke effort. In our Meaning in Motion lecture in New York last month, Cate Deicher showed how balloons can be used to evoke various combinations of the Action Drive.

Balloons were distributed to audience members. First they were asked to inflate their balloons by PRESSING the air into the balloon. Next participants were instructed to tie the balloon by WRINGING.

Now the fun began, as the audience began DABBING and sometimes FLICKING balloons to one another.

The climax came as participants were asked to burst their balloons by PUNCHING. This could be done by stamping on the balloon, or by sitting on it very forcefully. This was not as easy as it sounds. If a PRESS was substituted for a PUNCH, the balloon merely kept expanding without breaking. But eventually everyone found the right effort rhythm, and an ear-shattering POP was the result.

Illustrating the Geography of the Kinesphere with Oranges

Posted on January 15, 2015 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Laban visualized movement space as a spherical orb surrounding the body, which he called the “kinesphere.” He then went on to create a virtual geography for this spherical space, using lines, planes, and regular polyhedra — notably the octahedron, cube, and icosahedron.

Laban’s imaginary geography is quite practical. Nevertheless, imagination fails many students when they have to visualize their own bodies surrounded by geometrical figures.

During the Meaning in Motion lecture last month in New York City, I demonstrated one technique I have used to make Laban’s geometry of the kinesphere concrete. Using a couple of oranges, knives, a chopping board, and a bamboo skewer, I showed how the cardinal planes divide the kinesphere into eight movement zones, and how these zones relate to the cubic diagonals and the polar triangles of the icosahedron.

The first part of the demonstration illustrates how the cardinal planes divide the kinesphere. To show how the horizontal plane bifurcates the orb of personal space, I chop the orange in half, separating the top and bottom. To show the vertical plane, I chop the orange again, separating front from back. With a bit of manual dexterity, I can slice the rapidly-coming-apart orange one more time, separating the right and left sides, as the sagittal plane does. At this point, the orange falls apart into eight identical pieces. Oui la – the eight zones of the kinesphere!

My second orange is circled with colored tape to indicate the edges of the three planes. This shows that there are four upper zones and four lower zones. First I carve out the roughly triangular upper zone that is to the right and on the front surface of the orange. Then I carve out the opposite lower zone that is to the left and on the back of the orange. I run the bamboo skewer diagonally through the center of the orange, connecting the zone around right, forward, high with the zone around left, back, low.

This demonstration not only helps students see how the planes, cubic diagonals, and polar triangles relate to the globe-shaped kinesphere, but also entitles me to be known as the “Julia Child of Laban Movement Analysis.” Perhaps a cooking show will be next!

“Suit the Action to the Word…”

Posted on January 12, 2015 by Carol-Lynne Moore

These are the instructions that Hamlet gave the actors in Shakespeare’s famous play. Cate Deicher has used Hamlet’s advice in another way — to help nurses, artists, and architecture students invent movement. Such “non-dance” students are often shy about moving. So Cate has developed a lengthy list of action words as an icebreaker to get students on their feet and thinking kinetically.

In our Meaning in Motion lecture-demonstration last month, Cate shared her list with audience members and invited them to choose five words at random. Then participants were encouraged to abandon their seats and improvise short movement studies based on the list of words chosen. The actions could be arranged in any sequence.

Afterwards, one participant for whom English is a second language confessed that she did not know the meaning of all the chosen words. But by watching other people’s studies, she was able to deduce what each unfamiliar word meant! Perhaps movement facilitates language study by also making it possible to suit “the word to the action.”

You can try Hamlet’s advice to link actions and words with this excerpt from Cate’s list:

“stretch, sway, reach, roll, wiggle, curve, hesitate, twist, dig, skip, kick, flail, crouch, whirl, creep, withdraw, collapse, lean, scatter, slink, radiate, flutter, wave, enclose, undulate, wander, tremble, swirl, drag, kneel, scamper….”

Harmonize: Exploring Laban’s Advanced Theories

Posted on November 11, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

During my doctoral and post-doctoral research at the University of Surrey in England, I spent countless hours in a windowless room trying to decipher Laban’s faded writings and even more enigmatic drawings. These writings and drawings were part of the Rudolf Laban Archive, a treasure trove of material from the final two decades of Laban’s life.

Studying this material was hard work, but I always found Laban to be good company. He seemed to work in obsessive bursts on particular themes, puzzling over a topic again and again until he came to some resolution.

Harmony was one of the most recurrent themes. He truly believed that human movement has a harmonic structure analogous to that of music. Over time I began to understand what he was getting at, and I have written about this in The Harmonic Structure of Movement, Music, and Dance According to Rudolf Laban.

In the forthcoming Harmonize workshop in New York City (Sunday morning, December 7th), I will be sharing some of Laban’s advanced thinking about movement harmony. Laban’s ideas – however abstract or far-fetched – can always be translated into movement experiences and creative exercises. In the Harmonize workshop we will explore harmonic concepts such as modulation and transposition, taking theory forward into practice.

Laban never stopped – he kept developing his ideas in fascinating ways. I’m excited to be able to share this with fellow CMAs as part of the Meaning in Motion weekend of movement.

Find out more…

Revitalize
with Body, Effort, Shape, Space, and FRED

Posted on November 4, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

OK, I’m kidding.

Cate Deicher and I are not going to talk about FRED in the Revitalize workshops on Saturday, December 6th, in New York City. Instead, we will be sharing our novel views of BESS (Body, Effort, Shape, and Space) in these exciting refreshers for certificated Laban Movement Analysts.

Why are these refresher workshops unique? Because over the past decade, I’ve been integrating original material based on my research in the Rudolf Laban Archive into my LMA classes. Meanwhile, Cate has been pioneering new approaches in her work with unconventional students of LMA – artists, designers, architects, and nurses.

If this is not enough to pique your curiosity, here are five more reasons to attend Revitalize December 6th.

1) We have created a workshop schedule that you can customize to fit your time and energy.

2) The workshops are affordable. The more you do, the more you save.

3) Revitalize and the other Meaning in Movement workshops take place in a beautiful and easily accessible studio in midtown Manhattan.

4) It is a rare opportunity to study with Cate and myself, since we usually teach exclusively in the Midwest, West, or overseas.

5) As a teaching team, we rock!

Find out more about Revitalize and the whole Meaning in Motion weekend of workshops…