A Life for Dance

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human movement danceLaban’s autobiography, A Life for Dance, is a curious book, but one that reveals a great deal about his creative vision and theatrical activities.  As he notes in the letter to his publisher that opens the book:

“I recount in my book how a human being makes his way through thousands of circumstances and events.  Since this person happens to be a dance master or even a dance-poet, the book will frequently speak about the precious little-known art of dance.  The whole kaleidoscope of events, both gay and serious, revolves around dance dramas, plays, and festivals which that dance master has invented.”

Laban wrote the book in the early 1930s, after an injury ended his performance career.  It is a summing up of his own career in dance, and in that sense, a kind of farewell.  On the other hand, the third part of the book goes beyond the personal to address the roles that dance might play in contemporary social and cultural life.  Thus the book also looks forward.

Laban is particularly hopeful about what he calls dance-drama – a “completely novel dramaturgy” that “leads to a new perception of life which tells us of the inner path taken by a character.”  The dynamic and partially abstract nature of dance moves beyond being merely a representational narrative of characters and events.  As Laban writes:

“Merely to witness incidents does not force us to look too deeply into the nature of events.  Only the portrayal of the peculiar fusion of spiritual nobility and human passion which sets external happenings in motion compels us to experience that kind of involvement through which we come nearer to the deeper meaning of experience.”

Laban’s own dance-dramas often involved fairy tale figures, historical characters, or archetypes such as “joygrief,” “lovehate,” and death.  His work was not meant to be escapist, however.  Rather, “it is a turning to reality, where the meaning of the development of the hero’s true being is found, both in his nature and in the experience of his inner struggles.”   As he notes, “in the characters of a military leader such as Agamemnon, a Don Juan, a Savonarola, or in the comic and tragi-comic figures of a jester, a Casanova, and other historical and archetypal personages, I saw not so much the victims of fate, but more the embodiments of ethical values and attitudes.”

Thus his later work, Mastery of Movement, is not just about the acquisition of theatrical skills.  It speaks more deeply to mastery of a dynamic self –one that is not only bound to respond to events out of habit, but also capable to transcending habitual reactions by means of humane effort.

Observing Movement, Observing Life

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In Mastery of Movement, Laban asks readers to observe a person in everyday life, a person portraying a character in a mime scene, and a dancer performing a national or period dance.  Observers are to analyze the use of the body, along with the use of space, time, and weight.

movement dance

This is a useful exercise for any actor; it is also a task that Laban set for himself.  In his autobiography, Laban describes his first experiences as a young and very idealistic artist-to-be.  His first port-of-call is Munich, where he has been provided with various letters of introduction, and through these meets a fashionable society woman and her circle of admirers.  They set out to educate the naïve youth in the ways of the world, taking him to various entertainment venues and sending him on errands into the poorer sections of the city.

“So I began to acquaint myself more closely with other aspects of city life,” Laban writes.  In contrast to the elegant restaurants and night clubs patronized by his fashionable sponsors, Laban went to the stock exchange, to meetings of communists, to low-class cabarets.   “I got to know certain quarters of the city where crime was the order of the day” he recalls, “and I caught glimpses of the dark recesses of the souls of many apparently well-bred citizens and saw the inner wretchedness of the wealthy.”

Laban drew on these experiences 20 years later, in an evening long dance-play titled “The Night.”  Performed at the first Dancers’ Congress in 1927, the piece was a critical flop, and Laban freely admits this in his autobiography.  Nevertheless, his description of the experiences that led up to this dance-play provides insight into his desire to become acquainted with a wide range of human affairs.

Laban went on to distil these observations into movement.  This is what he continuously encourages the reader to do in Mastery of Movement.

Find out more in the Octa seminar, April 1 – May 6, 2017.

Laban’s Dramatic Imagination

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rudolf labanOne challenging aspect of Laban’s Mastery of Movement is his description of many dramatic scenes meant to be embodied by the reader.  These scenes involve multiple characters, various dramatic conflicts, and several changes in mood on the part of all the characters involved.

Laban wants the reader to get up and mime these scenes, thinking about how the body would be used, where movement would go in the space around the body, and what kind of efforts would appear and change.   It’s a tall order, one requiring a rich imagination.

I’ve written elsewhere about the necessity of using imagination to bring Choreutic forms to life.  But it is equally clear that using effort to embody various characters and dramatic situations requires imagination.  Laban’s scenes demand great effort variation, but can easily stray into stereotypic or melodramatic choices.   To avoid such regrettable diversion, Laban wants the reader to “think in terms of movement.”

Just as Laban was concerned to identify organic movements from place to place in the kinesphere, he was equally concerned to find natural sequences of effort change in the dynamosphere.  His guidelines on effort patterning in Mastery are a bit sketchy, so I intend to integrate more detailed approaches for “thinking in terms of movement” in the forthcoming Octa seminar. To do so I’ll be drawing on several models of effort relationships that I uncovered during my research on unpublished theoretical materials in the Rudolf Laban Archive in England.

To find out more, participate in the spring correspondence course, “Mastering Rudolf Laban’s Mastery of Movement.”

Gods, Goddesses, and Demons

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movement theory analysisIn Mastery of Movement, Rudolf Laban invokes gods, goddesses, and demons in his discussions of the “chemistry of human effort.”

“Gods as conceived by primitive man were the initiators and instigators of effort in all its configurations,” writes Laban.  “The strange poetry of movement that has found expression in sacred dance enabled man to build up an order of his effort actions, which is valuable and understandable to this day.”

Laban goes on to describe floating and gliding goddesses, divinities of joy that flick and dab, gods that wring, slash, and press, and demons that punch.  C.G. Jung would certainly see these mythical beings as archetypes with profound psychological significance.  But it takes an imagination like Laban’s to relate these figures to equally archetypal aspects of human effort.

These surprising combinations make Mastery of Movement a complex and nuanced work.  Find out more in the forthcoming Octa correspondence course.

Rudolf Laban – Man of Theatre

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rudolf laban theaterLaban’s life work was to create a rich palette of movement options from which a performer could draw.  By the time he wrote Mastery of Movement, he had a lifetime of experience observing movement and working with dancers and actors, which he distilled into this intriguing work.

Ironically, Laban’s own creative methods and experimental dance and theatre works are little known.   However, recent re-creations of work mounted by Valerie Preston-Dunlop, Alison Curtis-Jones, and Melanie Clarke provide glimpses of his work and methods that are useful in illuminating aspects of Mastery of Movement.

In particular, re-creations based upon repertoire of the Kammertanzbühne Laban reveal Laban’s theatrical vision.  Housed in an exhibition hall at the Hamburg Zoo, this small company performed several times each week for subscribers who came again and again in the mid-1920s.  As Preston-Dunlop notes, the company concentrated on four types of dance:  “ornamental, ecstatic, grotesque” and national folk dances.   The grotesque, “covered dances that were dramatic, odd, funny and made people uncomfortable, curious, amused, flabbergasted,” in other words, more theatrical than the other three types, which were respectively attractive, solemn, and colorful.

Laban and his assistant, Dussia Bereska, choreographed works, as did members of the company.  Much of the movement material was improvised, then shaped, as Preston-Dunlop notes, “through bodily, choreutic, and eukinetic articulation.”   As Laban notes in his autobiography, “familiar characters came into being, who were welcomed by the audience as old acquaintances just as in the medieval theatre.”

“For example,” Laban continues, there were “the jester, the juggler, obstinancy, rage, playfulness, the dandy, the tyrant, death, and many more.”  Some of these characters make repeat performances in the many dramatic scenarios Laban provides to stimulate readers’ movement imaginations.

Give your own dramatic imagination some food for thought in the forthcoming correspondence course, “Mastering Rudolf Laban’s Mastery of Movement.”

Laban Is Good Company

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Laban photoI have been re-reading Laban’s autobiography in preparation for teaching “Mastering Rudolf Laban’s Mastery of Movement.”  Laban’s writings are evocative, and I always find him to be good company.

Laban and I have seldom met in the most luxurious of settings.  During my seven years of doctoral and post-doctoral research, he and I met in a windowless room in the top of the University of Surrey library.  Here he kept me company under fluorescent lights as I engaged with his handwritten musings on yellowing sheets of paper and tried to make sense of geometric sketches in colored pencil.  I’m sure this kind of social get-together would not appeal to everyone, but Laban always held up his side of the conversation, even when I did not entirely understand what he was trying to say.

There is an element of mystery in all of Laban’s writings.  I think this is because he is always ahead of the rest of us in his global understanding of human movement.  Nevertheless, Laban is not a snob.  He genuinely wants to share his insight, and this makes him a good companion.

Mastery of Movement is not an easy read, but it is a worthwhile one.  Find out more in the forthcoming  Octa correspondence course.

Why Laban Wrote Mastery of Movement

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Mastery of Movement Rudolf LabanLaban wrote Mastery of Movement on the Stage (1st edition) “as an incentive to personal mobility.”  And indeed, the first two chapters provide a number of explorations organized around movement themes focused on body and/or effort.  Laban hopes to encourage a kind of “mobile reading,” as he explains in the Preface.

However, he also notes that there is something in the book for those who want to remain in a comfy chair.  That is, such readers can learn more about “thinking in terms of movement.”  For Laban, mobile thinking is not merely “cavorting in the world of ideas” any more than stage movement is “restricted to ballet.”  And herein Laban reveals his broader theme:  movement “forms the common denominator to both art and industry.”

In the Preface, Laban also makes it quite clear that movement is not merely a physical practice that can be mastered through mechanical exercises.  Movement involves the “inner life of man.” For genuine mastery, the motivation to move must be integrated with the acquisition of external skill.

Laban also establishes his views on theatre, noting that the stage is “the mirror of man’s physical, mental, and spiritual existence.”  And in the Introduction, he goes on to assert that movement is the heart of theatre, for there is no acting, speaking, singing, or dancing without movement.

In many ways, Mastery of Movement is a quintessential representation of Laban’s vision, which illuminates details of bodily activity and yet broadly positions the whole experience of movement in relation to human existence in the world of both tangible and intangible values.

Find out more in the upcoming correspondence course, Mastering Rudolf Laban’s Mastery of Movement.

What Makes a Good Team?

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movement pattern analysis teamLong before diversity became a political issue, Warren Lamb was encouraging diversity in management teams.  His model of diversity was not based on age, race, creed, or gender. Rather it was based on decision-making style.

Lamb found that the best teams are made up of people who have different decision-making strengths.   That is, you need someone on the team who is strongly motivated to Investigate, someone who Explores, someone who is quite Determined, someone high in Timing and so on.

There is just one problem.  When people approach decisions in very different ways, they are likely to get on each other’s nerves.  The Commitment-oriented individual wants to take action here and now.  The Attention-oriented person needs time to think things over and have a good look around.  Attenders can bother the Intention- oriented person who feels the first thing to be done to get to grips with the issues and resolve what needs to be done.  So there is a lot of potential for conflict in a diverse team.

And this is where the third value comes in – divergent decision makers need to learn to tolerate each other’s approaches and to appreciate what these very different motivations bring to the table.

So, in addition to Warren Lamb’s grounded theory, which brings meaning to patterns of movement, I would like to add three values that are equally important to the practice of Movement Pattern Analysis and particularly important at this moment: respecting individuality, fostering diversity, and encouraging tolerance.

Why I Became a Movement Pattern Analyst

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movement pattern analystShortly after I completed my Laban Movement Analysis training (1976), Warren Lamb gave a short course at the Dance Notation Bureau.  I had been thinking a lot about the relationship between movement and psychology, but in vague and hypothetical ways.  What Lamb presented was much more concrete — it blew me away.

Fast forward 40 years, Movement Pattern Analysis still blows me away for three key reasons.

First, Lamb’s grounded theory connecting movement patterns with motivational initiatives and decision-making processes continues to help me understand my fellow human beings better.

Secondly, understanding my own profile has enabled me to use my strengths, minimize my weaknesses, and work more successfully with others.

Finally, the observational skills I have developed by carefully watching and coding normal conversational behavior have convinced me that movement analysis can be used in a disciplined and reliable way.

Don’t just take my word for it.  Find out for yourself at the Introduction to Movement Pattern Analysis seminar.

MPA Stands Up to Rigorous Testing

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movement theory testingIn 2011, I participated in a pilot study examining the validity of Movement Pattern Analysis profiles in predicting decision-making patterns.  Although MPA has been used by senior business teams for over 50 years, its potential application to the study of military and political leaders has barely been tapped.  The pilot study was the first test of this new area of application.

Twelve military officers made up the research participant group.  The research team consisted of Dr. Tim Colton, a political scientist from Harvard and Dr. Richard Rende, a psychologist from Brown, along with Movement Pattern Analysts Brenda Connors, James McBride, and myself.  We interviewed the participants and constructed their profiles.  Several months later, the officers completed four hypothetical decision-making tasks designed by the other members of the research team.  The subjects could partially control the amount of information sought and the amount of time spent on each task before coming to a decision.

And the results?  As Connors, Rende, and Colton report:

“A composite MPA indicator of how a person allocated decision-making actions and motivations to balance both Assertion (exertion of tangible movement effort on the environment to make something occur) and Perspective (through movements that support shaping in the body to perceive and create a suitable viewpoint for actions) was highly correlated with the total number of information draws and total response time – individuals high on Assertion reached for less information and had faster response times than those high on Perspective.”

In other words, the MPA profile provided valuable predictive information about individual differences in decision making!

Find out more about your own decision-making patterns in the forthcoming Introduction to Movement Pattern Analysis seminar.