Reflections on Decoding Choreutics

Posted on by

Choreutics has always been my favorite book by Rudolf Laban.  Since first reading parts of it as an undergraduate, it has inspired and mystified me by its occasional and seemingly abrupt shifts between systematic description and cosmic speculation.  Laban hints at a deeper significance in human movement, but how he gets from A to B is elusive, thought-provoking, and exciting.

My most recent re-reading was occasioned by leading a correspondence course on Choreutics, accompanied by  21 curious and acute readers.  I have not dispelled all mysteries as the result of this experience, but I have come to terms with what Laban was attempting to do.  And I would like to encourage all students of movement to read this seminal work.  Because what Laban was attempting to do was to shed light on an ephemeral, omnipresent, and little considered aspect of human life – body movement.  And his work should be seen to be as ground-breaking and significant as Sigmund Freud’s explorations of the human psyche.

Great thinkers must also be great story-tellers.  That is, they must find some way to convey what they perceive in terms that can be grasped by others.  Freud’s approach was to divide the human psyche into three parts:  id, ego, and super-ego.  These are virtual or symbolic structures, for there is no part of the human body or brain that can be identified as an id, an ego, or a super-ego.  Yet these represent different aspects of psychological function and serve to explain, at least in part, why people act as they do.

Laban’s approach is to divide human movement into two parts:  choreutics (space)  and eukinetics (effort).  His mode of representation is geometrical – for patterns and sequences of both space and effort are coded on three-dimensional models.  These are both literal and virtual.  Movement in space can be captured as linear lines and shapes mapped on a 3-D crystalline grid.  Kinetic energy is less tangible, and Laban’s representations are more abstact.  Effort is a “fluid shadow.”  Sometimes it flows seamlessly from inside to outside and outside to inside, like a lemniscate.  Sometimes it circulates freely, twisting and untwisting.  Sometimes kinetic energy becomes knotted and stuck….

Like Freud’s psychological constructs, the kinesphere and dynamosphere are symbolic structures.  There is no geometric grid surrounding the mover, no inner cube of dynamic energies. Laban’s geometrical models represent different aspects of the human movement experience and serve to explain, at least in part, how and why people move as they do.

Diagonal Corridors of Action

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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.