Laban’s “Deflected Direction” Hypothesis

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Dimensions = stability and diagonals = mobility. Yet, according to Laban, “neither pure stability nor pure mobility exist.”  Natural human movement “is a composite of stabilizing and mobilizing tendencies.”

What is going on here?  Laban has taken a lot of trouble to delineate the dimensional and diagonal lines of motion.  And every Laban student, whether in a basic or advanced course, practices dimensional and diagonal sequences over and over again.  

Then Laban surprises us with the “deflected direction hypothesis.”  All of a sudden, he observes that “the deflected or mixed inclinations are more apt to reflect trace-forms of living matter.”

Laban’s critical observation of living movement is all-too-easily overlooked.  We know from principles of Gestalt psychology that the mind opts for rapid closure. We may perceive an unfinished circle that is not quite round.  But the mind conceives a perfect circle.

Analogously, Laban went beyond the rapid closure of dimensions and diagonals, delineating a variety of deflected lines of movement that fill the kinesphere.  Exploring these deflected directions offers a host of new bodily experiences in relation to space, gravity, and kinetic energy. Find out more in the upcoming MoveScape seminar, “Decoding Choreutics: Part 2.”

LIMS Turns 40!

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The Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies (LIMS) celebrated its 40th anniversary with a fabulous conference in New York City in early June. This international gathering was an embarrassment of riches, with fascinating workshops, panels, papers, and dance events.  

LIMS-Turns-40

Forty years ago, I was part of the Founding Board of the Institute, and I remember clearly our first conference in 1979 (celebrating the centennial of Laban’s 1879 birth). We were a young group of founders, enthusiastic and somewhat inexperienced.   But in 1979, many of Laban’s colleagues were still active. We managed to bring many of these “big names” in movement study over from Europe – Lisa Ullmann, Sylvia Bodmer, Warren Lamb, Geraldine Stephenson, Anna Markard (Kurt Jooss’s daughter), Martin Gleisner, and, of course, our inspiration-in-residence, Irmgard Bartenieff.

We looked up to these pioneers, as many of us were just beginning careers.

Forty years later, not only have the LIMS founders matured, the whole field has matured.  It is nice to find that, while we retain a youthful enthusiasm about the study of human movement, we are now a group of maturing professionals, with years of experience applying Laban Movement Analysis in many ways. Find out more about how Laban movement studies are growing up in the next blogs.

Dance and Conflict

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The Dance Studies Association (DSA) has chosen “Dance and Conflict” as the theme of its conference this summer in Malta. This promises to be a huge international gathering now that the Congress on Research in Dance (CORD) and the Society of Dance History Scholars (SDHS) have merged to form DSA.

I’m quite excited by this conference theme because dance is often considered to be a trivial pastime. The ways in which dance can bring people together and enable them to overcome differences is often overlooked. Both the paper my daughter will be giving at this conference, as well as my own, investigate the power of dance to build social bonds.

 

My daughter has been conducting ethnographic research in Honolulu, looking at the small breakdancing community there.  She has found deep bonds within this community, despite the fact that breakdancing is a competitive dance form in which crews battle for prizes and acclaim.

 

My paper addresses the “Dancing Classrooms” program developed by Pierre Dulaine, a competitive ballroom dancer.  Since 1994, this program has helped middle school children in New York City gain a sense of pride, confidence, and respect for others through learning ballroom dance.

 

Beyond that, Dulaine has taken the program to Jaffa, Israel, to teach Jewish and Palestinian children to dance together, and to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to work with Protestant and Catholic students.  Despite many difficulties, Dulaine has succeeded in overcoming deep animosities through the Dancing Classrooms regimen.

 

What is it about dance, including competitive dance forms, that builds social bonds?  Find out more in the next blogs.

Laban Clarifies the Geography of the Kinesphere

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As my imaginary conversation with Laban continued, the topic of the icosahedron came up.

CLM:  Let’s talk more about the kinesphere.

Laban-Geography-Kinesphere

R.Laban:  Think of it as the bubble of territory surrounding your whole body – the space you can reach with your limbs without taking a step.

CLM:  Does this movement space have a shape?  Is it a sphere?

RL:  Ideally yes.  But I needed to give it a more definitive shape, with some landmarks the dancer or mover could use for orientation. Eventually, I chose the icosahedron.

CLM:  I know that’s one of the Platonic solids.  There are only five of these regular polyhedra, and they were all known to the Greeks.   However, the icosahedron is not the most familiar one because it isn’t found in nature. Why did you pick the icosahedron?

RL: Well, the cube is probably the most familiar shape, but it isn’t very spherical.  The icosahedron comes much closer. And if you set it on an edge, the twelve corners, the edges, and the internal rays can be used as a kind of longitude and latitude for mapping movement.

CLM:  So you use the icosahedron to create a geography for movement space.  That’s amazing.

RL:  There’s a lot more to it….

CLM:  I’m sure there is, but let’s get something cool to drink!

World of Movement, World of Wonder

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Guest blog by Juliet Chambers-Coe

Laban characterized the dynamic yet ephemeral world of movement as “a jungle of sudden appearances and disappearances, a glistening and colorful wonder-world which awaits exploration.”

Girl-in-Flowers

The www.Labanarium.com  is a part of this ‘jungle’ and ‘wonder-world’ of which Laban speaks.  Members from across the globe meet through the network to share practice, ideas, research and inspirations from the world of movement, and it awaits your exploration!

In the spirit of movement and dance theorist Rudolf Laban, the Labanarium seeks to foster an exchange between members of the movement community and is open to the breadth and diversity of practices that explore all human movement.

Anyone can become a Member of the Labanarium – it’s free to join https://www.labanarium.com/register/

Benefits of membership:

  • connect to others in the movement community
  • have access to resource pages including Podcasts
  • create your own Group and invite others to join
  • get your activities featured on ‘Featured Contributors’ page
  • promote your events
  • increase your visibility in the field
  • engage in Laban theory with expert, established practitioner members
  • receive newsletters, articles, event invitations via the free mailing list subscription
  • participate in forum discussions

Check out some of our community’s expert contributions so far: https://www.labanarium.com/featured-contributors/

Laban reminds us that “dance is never the end of a development, it much rather seems to indicate the beginning of an unfolding…it is the spring-time of a new period….”

 

So, come to ‘jungle’ and have a look around, and join us in the unfolding of new beginnings in movement and dance!

The Labanarium – A Global Community

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Guest blog by Juliet Chambers-Coe.

In A Life for Dance, Laban recounts how he set about developing an artistic community of shared practice and ideals:

“To participate creatively in this great community idea and in the festive spirit which should be the goal and supreme aspiration of every culture…the daily building up of the communal culture which should culminate in festivities and celebrations and be intimately bound up with the development of the self…I asked all those who were sympathetic with my views to come and help realize this dreamed of way of life somewhere in the open country” (Laban, 1975).

People-in-Circle

Whilst many of us do not have the luxury of time, space and resources for developing such a community in the ‘open country’, the post-modern era in which we now live has provided us with other ways of coming together and for more of us connect worldwide across geographic, institutional and cultural borders.

The Labanarium offers such a community space, where members can develop the self within a supportive like-minded community of movement and dance practitioners and scholars.

The Labanarium is an international resource and network center for the movement community encompassing movement practices of any discipline. In the spirit of Rudolf Laban, the Labanarium seeks to foster an openness to the breadth and diversity of approaches to the practice and study of human movement as a psychophysical phenomenon.  

Founded in January 2017, the Labanarium is now one year old. In the past twelve months, we have seen members of the Labanarium community create performances, research events, create and attend workshops, record podcasts, ask questions and connect through movement, on the network and via the mailing list.

Membership is free of charge with only one requirement – an interest in human movement and an openness to the breadth and diversity of approaches that seek to explore it.

So why not join us and check out what is going on in your community, you are very welcome… www.labanarium.com

Dancing Across Borders

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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.”

Tow-People-Dancing

 

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

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outfeilder-catching-baseball

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.

Movement, Magic, and Transcendence

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The magical powers of movement fascinated Laban.  Two anecdotes recounted in his autobiography highlight his keen interest – the first was observing a folk dance meant to make warriors immune to wounds; the second was witnessing Sufi rituals in which dancers actually stabbed themselves but the wounds closed immediately.  Laban mused, “Belief in a magic that conquers nature was surely just foolishness, a childish superstition – but even so, wasn’t there something great, something immense hidden behind it?”

dancer dervish

 

This reflection, or perhaps quest, is reflected in many of Laban’s theoretical writings, where he hints at the spiritual value and transcendental power of movement.  For example, in Mastery of Movement Laban laments that “The European has lost the habit and capacity to pray with movement… The ritual movements of other races are much richer in range and expressiveness.”

 

Later, in this same book, Laban explains that “Living beings struggle with their surroundings, with material things, with other beings, and also with their own instincts, capacities and moods; but man has added to this the struggle for moral and spiritual values.” He adds, “The theatre is the forum wherein the striving within the world for human values is represented in art form.”  

 

Is Laban doing for acting and dancing what Kandinsky did for painting in Concerning the Spiritual in Art?  Find out more by joining other readers for a journey through Mastery of Movement, beginning in early March.

Laban and War

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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.

Man-Fencing-Laban-War

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.”